Last Summer We went to a festival across the river from Visegrád Castle in Nagymaros. At this Festival a Deaf drama group preformed Romeo and Juliet, with a slight twist. Romeo's family was Deaf, Juliet's hearing. After the play we left and went sight seeing at the Castle.
Sometime later, We spent a week at Lake Balaton in a Camp for the Deaf, where we got to meet some of the actors we had seen in the play a few weeks before. In fact Dorothy and I were being taught some basic Hungarian sign in a small group of hearing folks taught by one of the Drama Club's leaders. Her name is Erica. Erica gave us each an assignment for the week, we were to each read one of the children's story books she had handed out, and act out the story at the end of the week in Camp.
As it turned out, Erica liked us enough, and thought we were decent enough at acting, she invite us to join the Drama group that we had seen preform at Nagymaros.
Now It's kind of a big deal for a hearing people, especially Ameican hearing people who have almost no knowledge of the local spoken language(this was before we studied spoken Hungarian),to be invited into a Deaf weekly event. Did I mention that We were clueless as to how to sign in Hungarian as well, and I had (and still have) no idea how to even sign in American Sign Language. My God was placing an opportunity for us to be a real part of the Hungarian Deaf Culture, and have some fun at the same time!
So now we meet with this group every week to practice. We are soon to be preforming a drama based loosely upon the film "Playing By Heart". We have made friendships in this group and are picking up the sign language much quicker now, thanks to the One an Only who always meets us at our point of need.
Click here to see photos of my Terminator 2 pantomime from Deaf Camp 2009.
You guys are awesome!
ReplyDelete