I’ll be interpreting the Southwest Shakespeare Company‘s production of Richard III this Saturday at the Mesa Arts Center. I have listened to the readthru umpteen times, rented the movie with Ian McKellan, spent hours translating the Elizabethan English into ASL, seen the show four times and practiced interpreting it twice. Tonight I and my interpreting partner will do a “dress rehearsal” of interpreting the show on stage before an audience. The performance we will be interpreting will be the theater company’s second-to-last performance of this production. If anyone is interested in going, I have a limited number of free tickets.
A lot has happened since I last wrote a blog post, but this post is about how I interpreted my first Shakespeare play.
I had been preparing to interpret The Merchant of Venice for the Southwest Shakespeare Company at the Mesa Arts Center since early March, but after I presented my workshop at the Arizona RID State Conference at the end of March, I got to work on Merchant in ernest.
My co-interpreter, Sandra Solomon, who had already interpreted four shows for SW Shakespeare Co., met with me several times to rehearse interpreting the show. We corresponded with Missy Keast, our ASL Producer, via e-mail and met with her over videoconference to show her some of our interpreting and get her feedback, which was very beneficial. (Sandra came to my house and we sat together in front of my iMac with built-in iSight camera and used iChat to connect to Missy in Hawaii, since she also has a Mac with built in iSight and iChat. I only wish we’d been able to do this more than once.)
In addition to meeting a few times at each other’s homes to discuss the play and rehearse, Continue reading →
Latest DeafReads
