New film explores how deaf culture is engaging in live entertainment

Cat Brewer knows all about the ways music can lift spirits and change consciousness. In 2014, during the breakdown of her marriage, she sought the help of her voice, going out regularly to find musicians who could speak for her broken heart. But it wasn’t Gavin DeGraw’s chiseled face or confessional songs that caught her eye at the Napa show that year. Instead, Brewer was struck by the interpreters on stage, translating DeGlau’s lyrics into American Sign Language for the deaf and hard of hearing in the audience.

“I ended up paying more attention to her than De Grau, who I really like,” said Brewer, a longtime Alameda resident who now lives in rural North Carolina. “I’ve been going to concerts since I was a kid, and I don’t remember seeing a sign language interpreter. I didn’t know deaf people liked music. I had absolutely no idea, so after the show, I started talking to the interpreter and some of the deaf people present through the interpreter.”

The conversation she started that day morphed into an epic quest to understand how live entertainment is or is often not available to deaf fans, a search that culminated in her first film, sign the show.

The feature film will premiere in the Bay Area on Sept. 14 at her alma mater, Cal State East Bay, where she will meet Julie Rems-Smario, two of the film’s subjects. ) for a post-screening Q&A with award-winning Deaf activist and Hip Hop Explains founder Matt Maxey DEAfinitely Coatings and Chance the Rapper’s translation during the 2017 tour.

sign the show also screen in Holy Name University September 16 As part of the Auckland International Film Festival (15-24 September at venues around the city). It will be preceded by two short films, followed by a Q&A with Brewer.

This documentary delves into how deaf culture navigates and intersects with the live entertainment that hearing people take for granted. Much of the film focuses on effective and ingenious ASL explanations of how to turn on music for deaf audiences, starting with an intro sequence from Oakland R&B agency Tony! Tony! Tone! at the Alameda County Fair. As the voice repeatedly faded and returned, her camera spotted the American Sign Language interpreter jumping to the beat and signing the song to the beat.

The film clearly shows how insignificant access is to the 40 million deaf and hard-of-hearing Americans. Doors began to open in 1990 when President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which required venues to provide reasonable accommodations to make performances accessible. Julie Rems-Smario, a longtime education consultant who works at the California School for the Deaf in Pleasanton, remembers pre-ADA, going to see Prince and “studying his lyrics to figure it out before going to a concert” He may be singing,” she wrote in an email.

“Today, with the ADA, we have more access, but we still don’t have access anywhere. We still need to book ahead and make sure the interpreter is suitable for the type of entertainment. It’s not set in stone for interpreters in entertainment For example, it is important to hire interpreters with specific skills to translate concerts by rappers like Waka Flocka.”

Odie Ashford, African American Sign Language interpreter in Antioch, his work signed for the Waka Flocka Flame show go viral In a 2017 Facebook video, he has attended many concerts and festivals over the years. In 2014, she was hired several times for small gigs but was not fully prepared for her first big gig, signing OutKast and LL Cool J at BottleRock Napa Valley in 2014. Working in teams of two, so one interpreter can take a 20-minute break at intervals, the job requires more than fluency and stamina in sign language. Judgment and the ability to present colloquial, slang, or cryptic lyrics on the fly are also necessary.

Ashford realized she had a problem when her white teammate said he was very nervous about signing the N-word. “I said, ‘You gotta say niggas! It’s hip hop. It’s in every other horrible sentence. But we worked it out, so every time they said the N word, I’d show up in front of him and we took it as if Making a joke. But it’s always a challenge. How much Snoop Dogg do I actually know? How do you sign ‘shizzle my nizzle’? Sometimes you just have to be average, like this song is about a bunch of weeds, Then try to maintain that rhythm.”

Brewer discusses all these challenges sign the show In interviewing hearing and deaf interpreters, deaf music fans and musicians, they have come to understand that interpreters can open up their performances to otherwise locked audiences.

Interviews with Kelly Clarkson, Andre 3000, DL Hughley, Nyle DiMarco, Camryn Manheim, and D’wayne Wiggins offer interesting insights from an artist’s perspective, while also aiming to engage “hearing people to watch films about the deaf experience” , Brewer said. “It’s a very marginalized community. When I first started doing this, I thought I just had to have celebrities to get the audience.”

In many ways, Brewer is poised to investigate how musicians and hosts are making concerts accessible to deaf fans. For the past 20 years, she has taught communication studies at East Bay Community Colleges such as Laney, Chabot, Las Positas, and Diablo Valley. Following her experience at the Gavin DeGraw concert, she wrote an article about the difficulties deaf people face in accessing music, which was eventually published in the Oakland Tribune. A friend suggested this story could make a great documentary, so she went to the competition. She has extensive experience in marketing and publicity during her career helping guide her married jazz guitarist Terrence Brewer. She taught herself everything except a one-day filmmaking workshop.

“I went to Best Buy and bought an $800 camera,” she said. “I thought I would upgrade soon, but eight years later I still have it. Literally, I just started my hustle with gratitude and love, reaching out to people. I had a two-year relationship with Chuck D Twitter interaction, trying to coordinate an interview. I’d stand outside Cobb’s in San Francisco and try to catch comedians as they leave.”

although sign the show Brewer focuses primarily on music, including dramatic and stand-up parts, and the riveting detours raise many questions about the nature of expression and communication. A particularly active interpreter can inspire musicians on stage, but potentially enhancing the content of a concert could take the comedy into disturbing territory. Parody doesn’t work in deaf comedy, and there are many kinds of jokes that don’t translate to ASL. As one comedian points out in the film, “If you joke with translators, you’re taking them away from people who need them.”

Brewer has amassed about five dozen hours of material while working on Sign the Show, and she hopes to produce more clips and more in-depth interviews with interpreters and artists.The film returns to the Bay Area next month, as United Nations Association Film Festival It will screen at as-yet-unannounced locations in Stamford, East Palo Alto and San Francisco from October 20-30. More than just opening a window to an often overlooked community, sign the show Presents a compelling case that performing arts can entertain, inspire and engage audiences in every volume.

“I hope this film inspires society as a whole and inspires them to join the movement of the deaf community as allies to make every place of entertainment accessible to every deaf person,” Remus-Smario said. “Deaf people shouldn’t be fighting to get access all the time. We don’t have to think about whether this show or concert is available for us to watch. Entertainment should be enjoyed as much as listening to people.”