With deafness a major issue in ‘Tribes,’ director sought authenticity

“Tribes” is not your typical play, and the Unicorn Theatre’s production of the British family drama is not your typical show.

Nina Raine’s sharp comedy depicts Billy, a young man born deaf into a hearing family of intellectuals who never bothered to learn sign language and saw no reason for Billy to learn it either. He feels isolated until he meets a young woman, Sylvia, who can communicate in sign language.

Sylvia was born to deaf parents and is now gradually losing her hearing. She teaches him to sign, and he suddenly finds himself part of a larger deaf community with a new perspective on the world.

Theodore Swetz, who is directing “Tribes,” knows something about making theater. He heads the acting program for UMKC Theatre, and audiences have seen him perform often at the Unicorn, Kansas City Repertory Theatre and the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival.

When Swetz considered the particular demands of “Tribes,” he and Cynthia Levin, the Unicorn’s artistic director, quickly agreed: They would not seek actors who could learn sign language. Instead, they would find young people who could sign and had enough talent to smoothly integrate themselves into a cast of accomplished performers.

Indeed, the Unicorn cast includes actors with impressive resumes: David Fritts, Jan Rogge, Jake Walker and Nicole Marie Green (a third-year UMKC graduate student). But playing the key role of Billy is Paul Ososki, a teacher at the Kansas School for the Deaf. Lisa Lehnen, a professional American Sign Language interpreter, plays Sylvia.

Ososki was diagnosed with profound hearing loss in early childhood. He said a hearing aid helps him distinguish sounds. Lehnen has no hearing loss but took American Sign Language in college to fulfill a foreign language requisite and fell in love with it. Neither had acted professionally before.

Swetz acknowledged that, yes, he could have found hearing actors to play the roles. But he and Levin both saw the New York production, which featured Russell Harvard as Billy. Harvard, a professional actor, is deaf. So, Swetz said, finding two actors who were not yet fluent in ASL wasn’t an option.

“That was never the plan,” he said. The play, Swetz added, required a level of authenticity that might not be possible to achieve through conventional casting.

“There was a certain energy around this play already in regard to casting it right so the story really could be told,” he said. “And because Cynthia is so committed to local talent, we kept beating the bushes to find people.”

That eventually led to the casting of Ososki, 32, and Lehnen, 27.

“Once we found Paul, we were convinced that we needed someone (to play Sylvia) who was fluent in sign first and foremost,” Swetz said. “ We went for the sincere authenticity of a major issue in the play, which is this other language, this legitimate other language. And we were lucky to find Lisa.”

Lehnen said that the ASL community is small and that she heard about the show from Ososki. At first, she passed. She works for Deaf Expression, an agency that provides ASL interpreters for the deaf to meet a range of needs, including legal proceedings and medical appointments.

Lehnen grew up in the small town of Wellsville, Mo., and was part of a graduating class of about 30.

“I was in all the plays in high school, but it was a lot different than this,” she said.

At one point she put out what she described as a “low-key gospel CD,” but nothing had really prepared her for “Tribes,” which, among other things, requires a British accent. The experienced actors in the cast, she said, have been uniformly supportive. Green invited her out for coffee and gave her pointers to help her with the accent.

“What makes this very special is that even though acting is not in the lead of her accomplishments, the sincerity that Lisa brings to the process is priceless,” Swetz said. “It’s absolutely priceless. We’re telling the story with that energy, and it’s affecting the whole project.

“And Paul as well. Paul has done some acting, but it’s not his main interest.”

Ososki is a native of Michigan. He spent his high school years in Port Huron, where he was on the championship wrestling team. The school system had a deaf ed program. But, like Billy in the play, Ososki didn’t learn sign language until after high school. And, like Billy, he didn’t learn sign language until he met a deaf girl.

“I met somebody who was really fluent in ASL,” he said. “She was deaf herself. And it just kind of opened the doors. It was kind of like meeting Sylvia.… And it was a big thing. I started meeting deaf people and going out to the parties. It was a good time.

“I didn’t have that back in high school. I came from a school with 550 people in my class and the whole school was almost 3,000 students. I couldn’t make friends. You know, at a dinner table, everybody talking. Or the cafeteria, everybody talking. I missed out on so much.”

He attended Central Michigan University for three years and then enrolled at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. Gallaudet, founded in the 1860s for the education of deaf and blind students, is where he trained to be a deaf educator. He was inspired in part because his younger sister was born deaf, and he wanted to help her and others.

After graduating, he interviewed with the Olathe-based Kansas School for the Deaf. One day later, he was offered a job.

“Never been to Kansas,” he said. “Never dreamed of moving to Kansas. I thought it was going to be flat. I thought it was going to be basically farms. But I moved here. And it’s been three years now.”

When the play was staged in New York, the actors used American Sign Language. But the original production in London used British Sign Language, which Ososki and Lehnen said is so different from ASL that it’s really another language altogether.

Swetz said Ososki and Lehnen have introduced him to the deaf/ASL community, about which he knew nothing before he began working on the play. And he has found himself deferring to both of them because, after all, they are the authorities.

“It’s really interesting how life imitates some of the issues in the play,” Swetz said. “It’s a smaller world, the deaf community. And I have been learning so much. It’s been quite beautiful in that respect. But that’s what I meant by authenticity of truth behind circumstances. These guys know it. They just know it.”

This story was originally published June 3, 2015 at 7:00 AM with the headline "With deafness a major issue in ‘Tribes,’ director sought authenticity."