- Title: ISRAEL: Blind, deaf actors take centre stage
- Date: 17th February 2008
- Summary: (L!3) JAFFA, TEL AVIV, ISRAEL (RECENT) (REUTERS) WIDE OF PLAY OPENING, FEATURING A GROUP DEAF-BLIND ACTORS (SOUNDBITE) (Hebrew) GROUP WEARING MASKS KNEADING DOUGH, ACTOR ITZIK HANUNA, WHO WAS BORN BLIND AND WENT DEAF AT AGE ELEVEN AFTER HE WAS SICK WITH MENINGITIS, SAYING "My name is Itzik, and I am a member of the theatre group who lives in darkness and silence." (SOUN
- Embargoed: 3rd March 2008 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Israel
- Country: Israel
- Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment / Showbiz
- Reuters ID: LVA7SVF17SX575BAA4VY04S1LF4A
- Story Text: The theatre lights dim and the audience settle into their seats -- usually a cue for the actors to deliver their opening lines. Instead, the Nalaga'at troupe starts pummelling and stroking each other's hands.
This is not a high-minded avant garde dance piece, but a group of deaf-blind actors, who are captivating audiences in Israel by blending touch, mime, sign-language and music on stage in a cabaret-style show about dreams and disability.
Billed as the world's first professional deaf-blind theatre company, only three of Nalaga'at's actors can speak. One hears a little if you shout directly into her ear and a few still have some vision. But they all communicate primarily through touch.
Just to complicate matters, several of the actors are recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union and only know Russian sign-language.
Rehearsals can be chaotic.
"It's crazy and it's unbelievable and it's a big challenge and it's fun. It's like breaking through human boundaries," said Adina Tal, who inadvertently started the group in 2002 when she was asked to lead a deaf-blind acting workshop. "every time you do something that you have never done before in life."
In just over five years, the troupe has turned professional, toured the United States and Europe and moved to a swish new home in Jaffa, just south of central Tel Aviv.
Most of the Nalaga'at actors have Usher syndrome, which means they were born deaf and lost their sight later in life.
Called "Not by Bread Alone", the play aims to inspire the audience by exploring the actors' dreams and ambitions, and showing how they push the boundaries of their disabilities.
The actors bring dignity and a comic touch to their portrayals of lives lived in darkness and silence.
The troupe work as a unit on stage. Those who can speak translate for the mute, and those who can see guide the blind. Helpers tap the actors on the shoulder to indicate applause.
Bat-Sheva Ravenseri is deaf, mute and almost totally blind but steals the show despite never uttering a word.
"I feel here in 'Nalaga'at' very very special. A lot of things have changed in my life," she told Reuters via a translator, who converted questions into sign language.
"Now my life is very successful and I want to go on in 'Nalaga'at', in this special place," said Ravenseri, wearing an elegant purple dress and matching eyeshadow for the show, which has been sold out since it opened in December.
Nalaga'at is not the only organisation to focus on the skills people with disabilities have to offer: in Belgium, a unit of blind policemen are reportedly using their acute hearing skills to help catch terrorists, drug traffickers and mobsters.
But such examples are rare, and the deaf and blind still struggle to get jobs in many countries, even though working life is often possible thanks to technologies such as one that converts emails into braille.
At the Nalaga'at centre, which means "Please Do Touch" in Hebrew, the idea is to turn "normal" life upside down by empowering deaf and blind people and pushing seeing and hearing customers beyond their comfort zone.
Blind staff lead customers to their seats in a pitch-black restaurant, while visitors to the centre's cafe have to order drinks from deaf waiters in sign-language.
"The idea is that hearing and seeing people come to the centre not in order to give something to people that have disabilities but in order to get something and people with disabilities usually are in a position where they have to ask - please help me, please give me - and here it's like exactly the opposite," said Tal.
Here, the divide between Jews and Arabs that cuts so deeply through the rest of the region seems irrelevant, and young people with Usher syndrome from both sides of the conflict meet in support groups or work in the cafe.
Visitors to the 'Blackout' restaurant voiced enthusiasm after they experienced dining in total darkness.
"At first my wife wanted to go out because she was a little bit afraid," said a visitor named Zohar Goldstein and added: "I gave her my hand and I calmed her down and after a while we talked freely like we are talking in any restaurant and we stayed.. for two hours and even more."
"It's very interesting to not have your vision, to not be able to see because you are left with only your hearing, your sense of touch, smell and taste," said Efrayim Frank, another visitor. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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