BSL theatre in the making: Reflections from shadowing Fuse Theatre across London and Newcastle:

To have been invited to shadow Fuse Theatre was surprising and exhilarating; I don’t quite know why I was invited, but it was such an honour to have been asked to tag along!

Fuse Theatre is incredible. I’d not met them before May, when I was contacted by Surface Area and invited to take part in A Night In Sign at Alphabetti, where I immediately fell in love with Harry, Chris and Nadeem. Their warmth and enthusiasm, their compliments and seemingly genuine appreciation for my work was a joy. I’ve been a performer for a very long time, and I’m used to people being a bit quiet in their understanding and reaction to my performance, so to be so well received by Harry, Nadeem, and Chris was quite incredible. Then to be invited to London to watch their WIP of Macbeth & Banquo was beyond exciting! On arriving at The Globe’s Education Centre, I turned a corner, and there they were: Harry, Chris, Nadeem and William Grint, walking round the corner, and we met in the street. Immediately, I felt completely relaxed, and we hugged, chatted, got excited and went into the space. It was the education centre first, where I watched the 3rd day of the devised process. It was particularly relevant as the previous week, I’d spent in Sheffield with Vital Xposure, in a room of deaf BSL users workshopping to see if it was possible to create a script from a BSL start point, rather than English and translated into BSL. Fuse were doing just this, so I was hugely interested in their process.

Chris and I chatted at length about their process. It had started with a workshop, an idea, then a day of writing bullet points to refer back to, and then getting it up on its feet and actually workshopping it off the page. The main ‘script work’ (there wasn’t any, but for want of a better term) was improvisation based on the bullet points, stagecraft and muscle memory of the signing and movement.

It was a fascinating process, which made complete sense. It’s what happens when we take an English-written script, then translate it into BSL – but this time, the whole translation process had been bypassed and… it worked. It worked beyond well. The characters of Macbeth and Banquo were played by Nadeem and William, with choreography/movement added by Chris. The fight scenes and VV were just incredible, and I feel that starting with BSL added something of an authenticity to it, a particular level of organic ‘deaf’ movement, which wouldn’t have been there if it had started with English language. It might have been there, of course, but it felt more deaf because I knew how it had started, and the deaf culture and deaf nuances were there from the get-go.

It was a natural process with the two actors being deaf BSL users, and with Harry’s supportive, complimentary and gently suggestive and collaborative style of direction, what started as a pretty cool piece of lightly rehearsed improv in the morning, developed into an absolute piece of stunning theatre in the afternoon as we moved into the Sam Wanamaker space. Again, no physical script at all; just muscle memory and the ‘padding out’ of the improv, which had started with the bullet points and discussion.

It was incredible to watch the process; such an honour. And walking into the Sam Wanamaker for the first time and seeing the chandeliers was …. i think i signed wow about 30 times in a minute!

Moving into the second and third day with Fuse, I met them at the Newcastle Dance Centre, where they had literally just started working on a piece called Pray For Me, created and performed by Sarah Adedeji. Sarah is an incredible dancer, and the way she developed the piece again with the gentle support and absolute enthusiasm of Harry and the genius of Chris’s movement was quite something to watch. Isra3l composed and performed a beautiful continuous soundtrack, and the lyrics had been a poem created by both Sarah and Isra3l, then music was added to it to form the final overlaying (underlaying?) soundtrack running through the piece.

Again, the piece had been developed as a WIP without an English script. I’m really liking this way of working – it takes discipline, focus and confidence to take something and play with it.. and it excited me.

The reason I got so invested in the process is because so much time is wasted by taking an English script and translating it into BSL and then thinking about the translation of the words, the meaning of the words, the emotion behind the meaning and now to transfer that into performance BSL but retain the English meaning. By starting with BSL, that is kind of ‘homegrown’ and develops in a more honest way, and the beautiful way this is performed is very interesting. Exciting to see the process – I’ve been working in this way in a very small way, for a few years, mostly performing my own poetry.

I had missed the second day of workshopping, so I didn’t see the whole process, but I had a pretty good idea of how it was looking by the end of the first day. As I met up with them on the Saturday at Alphabetti, the music had been added and worked into the most mesmerising performance by Sarah. Chris’ choreography and again, Harry’s gentle and inspired direction added to the whole thing.

The stage direction and lighting were minimal, given that it was a WIP, but that did not factor into the final performance at all. The lack of lighting was completely irrelevant. Sarah commanded the space perfectly and with incredible strength, and took the audience on a journey which hit square in the feels. I think – once again – that had this piece begun with an English script, it would have lost some of the honesty of it. Of course, with it being improvised and relying on muscle memory to create the BSL story, it gives the actor/performer a much more free experience. I mean that Sarah wasn’t constricted by following exactly the ‘English script’ and she was able to read the mood of the audience and change little bits where she felt she wanted to. Isra3l followed her lead perfectly, and the Alphabetti sound engineer (I didn’t catch his name) perfectly took his cues from Isra3l’s musical lead.

Rarely have I cried real tears of absolute emotion at a theatre performance. I cried real tears at PRAY FOR ME. For 3 reasons:

1. The content of the piece touched my deaf heart, and I identified with a lot of Sarah’s emotions. That wouldn’t have been possible if it had been created from a hearing point of view

2. Isra3l’s music was just inspired and created the atmosphere perfectly.

3. Seeing how Harry and Chris were moved by Sarah’s performance was beautiful – they’re incredibly supportive and rejoiced in the finished piece – that was infectious. Seeing their utter appreciation for Sarah’s work carried me along in the moment and made me very proud to also be a deaf performer.

I think watching the way that Fuse work has given me a bit of a wider perspective on what’s possible for the future of deaf-led theatre. Having spent the week in Sheffield with Vital Xposure in a room full of deaf BSL actors, directors and theatre makers, then spending the 3 days shadowing Fuse, who were actually doing what we’d spent a week talking about and wondering if it was possible, I’ve come away feeling confident that I’m doing my own small performances in the right way. Even if it is very small and insignificant in the theatre world, it’s what I’m doing, and I’m even more proud of standing out as a deaf BSL performer, creating my own style of BSL performance.

Thank you, Surface Area, for allowing me to peep into the process which Fuse is adopting. The way they work is very similar to things I’ve done in the past, but haven’t had the privilege of doing in recent years. Seeing them work has given me validation for my own practices.

Warmly,

Colly