For this month’s UIL one-act play competition, Lake Highlands High School theater teacher Michael Stephens chose an ambitious project — “Sweet Nothing in My Ear,” a play about a multigenerational family’s struggle between the deaf and hearing worlds. Lucky for him, Stephens has the help of neighbor MELISSA ALLOWAY, who has taught deaf education at Stonewall Jackson Elementary for 30 years.
How did your interest in deaf education begin?
It’s kind of corny. When I was 14 or 15, I saw “The Miracle Worker” with Patty Duke, and I was intrigued by the fact that she was highly intelligent, but it was a matter of finding out how to communicate with her. I was interested in the blind and the deaf, but when I learned how the deaf have their own language, and the challenge of connecting with the children and communicating with them and teaching them to communicate, I was more fascinated with that.
How do you teach them?
They learn sign language the way hearing children learn new vocabulary. We use a lot of visuals, actually — pick up an orange and point to it and sign “orange.” It has to be highly visual to introduce the new vocabulary and concepts.
How did you get involved in this play?
Somehow, Mr. Stevens learned that my daughter, Meredith, had gone to school at Stonewall Jackson and that she had learned sign language, and he said he had seen this play and always wanted to do it, but never had any connection to anybody who knew sign language. He talked to Meredith, and she said she could refresh her memory to play the deaf mother, then he asked me: “Would you mind helping with the play?”
What all does that entail?
Initially, I read through the script to change it from the original. The play was written to be done in American Sign Language (ASL), which has its own grammar and syntax, so I had to spend some time going through the script, translating it from written English to ASL and figuring out how to have them sign it. It’s difficult for people with their English word order brains to learn pure ASL, so I’m going to teach them a kind of combination of ASL and English because the cast, aside from Meredith, has never learned sign language. So it’s interesting — the ones who are playing a deaf person can’t use their speech; they have to turn off thinking about spo