CSUN’s Deaf Students Learn About Art With Dose of Reality

Linda Bove has been a regular on “Sesame Street” for 13 years, teaching children how to count to 10 and say their ABCs.

But that’s not her only teaching job. Bove, one of a very small group of working deaf actors in Hollywood, helps deaf art students to learn about the complexities of Hollywood. She and her husband, actor/director Ed Waterstreet, began teaching acting and storytelling to deaf students at Cal State Northridge last fall.

Indeed, CSUN is the only college in Southern California that offers a well-rounded arts education to deaf students, said Herb Larson, head of support services at CSUN’s National Center on Deafness. Deaf students are enrolled in all arts departments, including music.

“Our goal here is not only to develop deaf actors,” Larson said, “but writers, camera people, movie directors, all that. Deaf people can do anything.”

Until a few years ago, deaf Americans who wanted to work in the arts were, for the most part, restricted to performances given exclusively by and for the deaf community. Groups such as the National Theater of the Deaf were critically praised, but, until recently, success in the that theater never paved the way for a career in Hollywood.

Since 1980, however, deaf actors have won top awards for their work on Broadway, in films, and on television. Phyllis Frelich broke the barrier in 1980 when she was awarded a Tony for Best Actress in the play “Children of a Lesser God.” In 1986, Julianna Fjeld collected an Emmy for best picture for the TV movie TV-movie “Love Is Never Silent.” Fjeld was one of two executive producers on the film and performed a small role. In 1987, Marlee Matlin won an Oscar for best actress in the film version of “Children of a Lesser God.”

Despite these advances, most high school and college programs for deaf arts students are not career oriented, Larson said. But for decades, deaf students have enrolled at Cal State Northridge to take advantage of its special programs, which emphasize the mainstreaming of the deaf into the student body.

CSUN set up a program to provide full-time interpreters for deaf students in 1962. “In the past, we always had to look for a friend or a relative,” Larson said, adding that some CSUN teachers have now learned to sign and that others, who are deaf, have interpreters who speak for the benefit of hearing students. This fall more than 200 students, many of whom are interested in studying the fine arts, will be registered at the National Center on Deafness, which works to train administrators, too. (Deaf students at CSUN take “mainstream” classes and courses offered through the Deaf Studies program.)

More Work

But Larson, who is deaf, believes there is more work to be done. His goal is to continue to make an arts education equally available to all CSUN students. Through education and example, Bove and Waterstreet bring the message to hearing and deaf students alike in their classes.

Both Bove and Waterstreet are members of the National Theater of the Deaf. Besides her continuing work on “Sesame Street,” Bove was a regular on the serial “Search for Tomorrow” and has guest-starred on several TV series, including “Happy Days.” Waterstreet, who starred with Phyllis Frelich in “Love Is Never Silent,” teaches acting to students--both deaf and hearing--across the country.

“We’re trying to have the drama department here take us under their wing and hire a deaf teacher in their program,” Waterstreet said. The classes, however, have been taught under the auspices of the Deaf Studies program. Both Waterstreet and Larson would like to see deaf theater classes moved into the theater department. They also want to add a deaf instructor to the theater staff. The reason there isn’t one now, Larson, Bove and Waterstreet agree, is more the result of budgetary concerns than lack of interest by administrators.

Larson, who is president of the Silent Network, a satellite service that aims to provide programming to all deaf Americans, and is the host of “Off Hands,” a talk show for the deaf that airs at 6:30 a.m. Wednesdays on KHJ/Channel 9, has hopes for developing CSUN as a mecca for deaf students interested in acquiring mainstream jobs in the arts.

“A class here in acting would be super,” Larson said, because so many deaf people are in the Los Angeles area. “We already have Linda and Ed. Marlee Matlin, Phyllis Frelich, all these people are moving here. We could get a lot of really talented people to help with this class.”

Larson has plans to get deaf students involved behind the camera as well. “The Silent Network hopes to set up some training for people who are interested in the field of television--not only in front of the camera but in all aspects: production, direction, camera work and even sound. If it goes well, we hope to begin integrating such classes here at CSUN.”

Educating the deaf in the ways of Hollywood is only half the solution; Hollywood must be educated in the ways of the deaf, said Fjeld, an actress who has turned producer to create more work for the deaf.

Deaf actors stress that the primary difference between the deaf and the hearing is that American Sign Language (ASL) is not simply another way to express English, but a language unto itself, with its own grammar, vocabulary, syntax, and idioms. Deaf people who use ASL have therefore developed a culture with customs and folkways different from Americans who speak English as their first language. It’s these differences, Fjeld said, that have to be understood before deaf artists can coexist in Hollywood.

Conquering Fears

“The hearing and deaf communities have to dispel fear of each other,” said Fjeld, who has performed locally at the Mark Taper Forum and appeared at CSUN last year in a touring production of “The Glass Menagerie.”

She said that it’s not only the hearing world that has misconceptions. “When I grew up, deaf people were taught to be meek. I thought hearing people were gods, were like Superman.”

Fjeld spent 10 years trying to get “Love is Never Silent” to the screen. The film, featuring deaf leads and extras, won an Emmy for the best TV movie of 1986 and Best Picture at the Monte Carlo Film Festival, where it competed with theatrical and television features from around the world.

Although the picture was set to go at one network several years earlier, Fjeld held back production when the network wanted hearing actors Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward to play the deaf leads. When the network refused to capitulate, Fjeld had to take her film to another network, NBC, to get it made.

Landmark Production

According to several of the deaf actors interviewed for this article, “Love is Never Silent” was a landmark for the deaf in another way. In the past, deaf characters in television and the movies were often portrayed as victims or as emissaries brought in to educate the hearing world. In “Love is Never Silent,” the deaf leads were written as complex, sometimes unsympathetic characters--a trend that deaf actors approve of.

Bove cites an episode of “Barney Miller” in which Phyllis Frelich played a prostitute, and a “Cagney and Lacey” that featured a deaf murderer as some of her favorite media portrayals of the deaf. “Hollywood,” she said, “is the last bunch of people who really want to understand.”

Other actors have taken different steps to provide more roles--and a better variety of roles--for the next generation of deaf actors.

Mark Dana, a teacher and therapist as well as an actor, sees four impediments in Hollywood to getting more work for deaf artists. “One, they say it slows down production, which isn’t true. Two, the writers say it’s too difficult to work into scripts. Three, they say there isn’t really any interest out there, and last, they’re always looking for ‘name’ actors.”

Dana has joined the Screen Actors Guild’s Minority Access Program, a workshop in which minority actors videotape mock commercials and scenes in an attempt to open producers’ eyes to the diversity of minority and handicapped actors.

Trendy Issue

“Deaf people were a kick, a trend, for a while,” Dana said. “We’re kind of where black people were when a network first hired Diahann Carroll for her own show. But we haven’t even really gotten that far yet, mostly because we don’t have mentors around. There are no deaf people in top-level studio positions.”

So far, the SAG project hasn’t yielded results, though Dana is hopeful. His largest role to date was a guest-starring appearance on the series “Fame,” where he played a counselor brought in when one of the series regulars became deaf.

“Yeah, he went deaf for a whole week,” Dana said, laughing. “Extremely realistic.”

Waterstreet remembers the apprehension of his first day on the set of “Love Is Never Silent.” There was, he said, some concern about deaf actors slowing production and increasing costs. “Before we started shooting they were really concerned . . . but we finished right on time.

“Later I thought, ‘I could have used the extra money from two or three weeks of additional work,’ and I thought, ‘Darn! That was stupid! I should have made some mistakes!’ ”

Waterstreet laughs as he tells the story, but his point is clear: Deaf actors can’t afford to make mistakes; they might jeopardize future work for up-and-coming deaf students. Bove agrees. “I encourage people to go into theater,” she said, “but at the same time you have to talk about job availability, and I caution them to be careful. Deaf people have to, in a sense, make work for themselves and not wait for Hollywood to come to them.”

At CSUN, the people who run the Deaf Studies program are well aware of the problems inherent in educating deaf students in the arts while simultaneously preparing them for the reality of trying to get work in Hollywood. Larson, Bove, and Waterstreet are convinced that they have made a great deal of headway.

Bove said: “Fifty years ago, you never heard of a deaf person living on the earth. They were kept in special schools and hidden away. They didn’t want them to gesture, to use their language, in public.”

“Deaf people are too polite sometimes,” Larson said. “One reason for that is the communication problem. We have to look for ways to get our message across.”

“Compared to 10 years ago, there was almost nothing,” Waterstreet said. “But we have to give it time.”

High School Level

Once college programs have been established for deaf students in the arts, said Larson, educators are “going to have to start thinking about expanding arts education to the high school level.” It’s the only way, he added, that deaf students can keep up as the college-admissions process continues to grow more stringent every year, demanding experience in arts as well as letters and science.

“A requirement for new students coming in here, from here on out--they will look at their experience in the arts. If deaf people don’t have the opportunity to take those courses in high school, how will they meet the requirements for admission? They’ll have to make exceptions,” Larson said.

“And we don’t want that.”

Debbie Gonzales interpreted for Bove, Larson, and Waterstreet. Allman, a Santa Monica free-lance writer, translated for Fjeld and Dana.