Culture
This Bay Area ASL Interpreter Is Expanding Access to Performing Arts
Courtesy of Sherry HicksThose who regularly attend Mountain Play performances on Mount Tam may wonder about something that happens just offstage — a small team of interpreters signing and emoting along with the performance.
If you happen to be deaf or hard of hearing, they are as important to enjoying the performance as the singers, dancers and actors onstage. This team is led by Sherry Hicks who says more goes into ASL interpretation than many realize.
But how did Hicks, who teaches American Sign Language at UC Berkeley and has been interpreting performances all over the Bay Area for more than 30 years, get her start? “I’m a hearing child of deaf parents and I have a sister who is also deaf. My first language is American Sign Language,” she says. “I guess the earliest sign I can remember was trying to spell out the word ‘assassination’ when JFK was shot and not knowing what that was.”
For Hicks, who also remembers signing songs for her sister, translating performances — where often the goal is to communicate the meaning instead of getting every word — comes easy. “It comes pretty automatic: you hear the utterance, and you express it,” she says. “It flows like a river.”
To prepare for a performance Hicks puts together a team of two or three people and they go over the script, take notes, watch at least one performance and divide up the parts. They also may have a director watching it all and calling for more clarification where needed.
“We practice and go see the show so we know what we’re going to step into,” Hicks says, adding that before onstage moments like a big reveal or sight gag it’s important for the interpreters to look at the stage to indicate to the deaf audience to do the same. “At the time of the show we carry the ball and we just do the best we can.”
Hicks says that ASL interpretation is both demanding and rewarding. “It has its own grammatical structure, is emotive and uses facial expression and the whole body to express what’s being said,” she says. “It’s a beautiful thing, just an absolutely amazing job to have.”
According to Hicks, there is only a small group of people who do this kind of work across the country and most of them know each other. She adds that ASL interpretation only really happens in the big cities and there is more that could be done to provide interpretation to other communities. Continuing to give everyone access to the arts is the ultimate goal, she says: “We’re all trying to work with the up-and-coming interpreters to pass on the legacy of performance interpreting.”
