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.

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, Sandra and I interpreted four performances of the show at the Mesa Arts Center before actually interpreting it for an ASL audience on Saturday, April 18 at 2 PM. There were about a dozen people who came to the show specifically to see us, so that was a good turnout. I only wish there had been deaf people in the audience, but as much as I got the word out, there were none.

How did I get the word out, you ask? Well, in quite a few ways: Sandra & I each brought fliers to our respective workplaces at Sorenson VRS and Purple Communications. We also left them on the Arizona RID table at the Arizona RID Conference. I gave a stack of fliers to Robin Dragoo, the president of Arizona RID, and he put them on the Arizona RID table at the DeafNation Expo at the Phoenix Convention Center. In addition to that, I created an event on Facebook to publicize the interpreted performance and invite all the deaf people I know who live locally and are on Facebook, but alas, none of those people came. Still, about a dozen people came to see us perform our interpretations, and several of them were ASL interpreters who will no doubt benefit from our work and use it to inform their own theatrical interpreting, which will in turn benefit other audiences.

I strongly believe there is a positive ripple effect in this that is a good thing for the community as a whole– for the hearing world to see that SW Shakespeare offers interpreted performances, for local deaf people to see that it was available (and maybe they’ll come another time?), and for local interpreters to add to their professional development by interpreting (in our case) or watching (in the case of our colleagues) an ASL-interpreted Shakespeare play.

I know, for myself, that interpreting Shakespeare forced me to work on conveying meaning while dropping form. Let’s just say that I am proud of all the words I didn’t sign. It was a pleasure to be able to convey Shakespeare’s language in a way that was understandable yet retained a touch of his creative spark.

So, what are all the things I’m doing (and/or avoiding doing) right now? Well, there is the matter of taxes. My husband’s employer somehow forgot to take out any taxes for him in 2008, and he somehow never noticed this. So I have to pay his tax debt with my tax refund. But to get my tax refund, my tax accountant needs to return my phone calls and e-mails, which so far he hasn’t. The sooner I get my taxes filed, the sooner I get my return, and the sooner we can file my husband’s taxes along with the money he owes. I would be nice if filing jointly were an option for same-sex couples.

Then there is the Arizona RID State Conference this weekend. I am presenting a workshop on Saturday afternoon titled “Knowing What They’re Going to Say Before They Say It: Using Genre Recognition to Improve Your Predictive Skills.” I’m in a competing time slot with Ari-Asha Castalia, Sharon Neumann Solow, and Teddi Von Pingel, so no pressure there. Oh, and the company I work for, Purple Communications, tasked me with staffing the booth in the exhibit hall with at least one or two Purple employees at all times during the weekend and recruiting in-house interpreters such that there are four of our interpreters in the conference interpreting team during all the workshops on Saturday and Sunday. So far, I’ve succeeded in staffing the exhibit hall and the interpreting team; I’m just crossing my fingers that everyone shows up when they’re supposed to. Note to self: send reminders! In addition to teaching a workshop and staffing Purple’s presence at the conference, I will also be taking workshops to earn my much-needed CEUs so that I can remain nationally certified and licensed to interpret in the state of Arizona. And while I’m there, I’ll have my camera with me to take photos, as I’ve been asked to do this as well. One last thing: I really should attend the business meeting at 4 PM on Friday since I am the Bylaws Chair, but I work until 5 PM at HOVRS, so I don’t see how I’m going to make it. I’m going to need to see about that.

So, that’s this coming weekend. The weekend after that is my husband’s 50th birthday party. So there are preparations to be made, things to be cleaned around the house, invitation reminders to send, etc.

Plus, there’s the little detail of preparing to interpret William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice for the Southwest Shakespeare Company on April 18 at 2 PM. Somehow, I have to find time to work on that even this week when things are so crazy.

I’m also, along with my husband, the vice-president/secretary of our neighborhood association, which is trying to take the neighborhood historic. We have a meeting tomorrow night which I need to send out reminders about today and I must preside over tomorrow because Andy will be working. I’ll have to ask someone else to take minutes. Then we have our big meeting with Vice Mayor Tom Simplot on April 28, at which we hope that many residents will appear to show the vice mayor how keen we are on going historic. (Many dollars and hours have been spent by residents before me and my husband even moved here four-and-a-half years ago to document this neighborhood and apply for historic designation, and it looks as though, with the Vice Mayor’s help, all those years of efforts may finally pay off.)

So, there you have it. That’s what I’m up to these days. And that’s just the planned stuff. We all know that life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. I probably shouldn’t have even spent the time to write this blog entry, but at least it’s productive in terms of getting these projects out of my head and onto the “page,” as it were. And by stating these things publicly, I hold myself accountable and perhaps I ask for help. Or, at least, patience.