Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story in ASL

Details

Description

A PASSION PROJECT BY ASL STUDENTS

This is an ASL interpretation, student project of select songs from “Hamilton.”

We hope you can appreciate the sincere love and countless hours these kids and their instructor have put in, to both honor Mr. Lin-Manuel Miranda's beautiful passion project as well as our beloved Deaf community. We believe, "the world is wide enough…”

We are always open to welcoming more students into our group. This program is still in its infancy so we appreciate your patience as we work out the kinks. We welcome Deaf, hard of hearing and hearing students, ages 13 to 18, who reside in Florida and have a desire to learn ASL through theatre. Please contact us for more information.


OUR STUDENTS

These students are a group of dedicated high schoolers, who have each been studying and learning American Sign Language for 3+ years.

This group is comprised of both hearing and hard of hearing students, as all are welcome who have a desire to develop their signing skills through theatre.

These special kids know that they are not perfect, but they deeply love and appreciate this beautiful language. They are honored to have the opportunity to merge the worlds of signing and theatre together.


ABOUT THE TRANSLATION

Since this is a student project, we were intentional about the translation matching the levels of the students involved. There are some aspects of the lyrics that were not included in our translation, as we took into consideration the age of the participants. For example, the concept of “shot” from the lyrics of “My Shot.” Our interpretation used the sign for “chance,” as we did not wish to reference alcohol or violence.

Since this project is also musical-based, the signing is often synched with the beats of the song. We wanted to reflect the lyricism and musicality in the students’ signing. There are numerous ways to interpret just a single line of text; this was just our chosen way.

As you can see in this video (that features a Deaf ASL performer), mouthing the English words when signing a song does not make it SEE (Signed Exact English): • "Alexander Hamilton" - ASL . The interpretation into ASL is evident by the concepts being portrayed and it not following the exact English lyrics.


A NOTE FROM OUR HEARTS

Like Washington says in “One Last Time,” “I am unconscious of intentional error. I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors.”

Like with everything in life, we know that this project is not without its flaws - but we always want to encourage our students to keep striving! We are happy that they were courageous enough to do their very best; they know too, that there is always room for improvement.

Research shows that engaging in various disciplines in a second language, aids in developing fluency. In our case, that discipline is theatre!

Thank you again for your kindness and support.


CONTACT

💌 Email: americansignlanguagetheatre@gmail.com

🌎 Instagram & TikTok: @asltheatre