BACKSTAGE: ‘CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD’ : Special Insight : The use of hearing-impaired actors provides lessons for acting newcomers and the director.

Casting the Conejo Players’ production of “Children of a Lesser God,” director John Hulette wasn’t necessarily looking for actors with a hearing disability, even though the Tony award-winning Mark Medoff play takes place in and around a school for the deaf.

The rule is, he explained recently, that “professional productions are required to use hearing-disabled people to play the three roles of deaf students. Community theater groups, like the Conejo Players, are given more latitude.”

Which may explain why, of the more than 100 inquiries he received from across the country--from as far away as New York--the majority were from hearing actors and actresses, “. . . what we affectionately refer to as “wannabe deaf girls.”

“But,” he continued, “I have had no real experience with the hearing-impaired, and I felt that if I didn’t have the experience, the actors certainly should.”

The leading role went to Kristine Finnestrom, an alumnus of the National Theatre of the Deaf Summer Program and secretary of the organization Hearing Impaired Performers. The smaller, though important roles, went to two hearing-impaired students from Pierce College in the San Fernando Valley, Teliaferro (Terry) Miller and Laura Jean Barton. Both are making their theatrical debuts in the production.

“Once in a while,” Hulette said as the play entered its final week, “you hook yourself into a natural, one who will be perfect with what they bring to it. And Laura and Terry were. One of the ways I know I made the right decision, in addition to my own pleasure with their performance, was that all of the reviews emphasized them strongly.”

“I went with Terry to the audition,” 22-year-old Barton recalled, “changed my mind and went home--I’d never done that sort of thing, and didn’t think that I could compete with experienced, hearing actors.

“The next day, Sherril Alstadt, one of the show’s sign-language instructors, called and told me to go out for it, that I was perfect.”

Barton plays Lydia, a flirtatious student who competes with Finnestrom’s somewhat more mature character for the attentions of instructor James Leeds, played by Michael Tachco.

“The character really matched me,” Barton said with a smile. “I used to flirt, and I look young--Lydia’s supposed to be in her late teens.

Unlike Finnestrom, both Barton and Miller are able to hear sounds and comprehend speech, though with a far less than normal ability.

Barton grew up in Van Nuys in a hearing environment and went to public schools--Cal Poly in Pomona, where she studied ornamental horticulture, and now Pierce College.

In high school, she joined the student agricultural organization 4-H and was encouraged by her parents and teachers to participate in community work and public speaking. “But after high school,” she admits, “I fell apart, because I was alone. I let my disability get in my way, and I shouldn’t have.”

Miller, 23, is from Gainesville, Fla. After losing much of his hearing in a childhood bout of German measles, he went to a special school, wore a hearing aid and took speech therapy. He’s an award-winning runner and has a dance group, Get ‘n’ Bizee.

In “Children,” he plays Orin Dennis, a self-absorbed and contentious young man whose resentment of the treatment received by hearing-impaired people parallels the feelings of many persecuted minorities. As far as Miller has been able to determine, he is the first black actor to play the role, though the parallel is a right and insightful one.

“I’ve always had the goal of being an actor,” he says. “I also wanted to be a singer, but knew that couldn’t happen.”

In a dance contest, Miller met William Byrd, an actor who had appeared in the film version of “Children of a Lesser God.”

“He advised me about acting. Last year, I auditioned for three commercials: Swatch, milk and Jack in the Box. I lost confidence in myself when I didn’t get any of the parts.

“I froze onstage during the auditions for this show. It was my worst nightmare, coming true. I was called back to read with another actor and froze again. But I wound up getting the part.”

Hulette says: “One of the things that make Laura and Terry perfect is that they are those people. You ask Terry the right questions, Orin’s answers come right out of him. When he understood that it would be OK to react to a situation as Terry would do, that’s when he got the character.”

Miller admits to considerable anger.

“The sign language I learned in Gainesville is quite different from what’s done here--I had learned to sign English, with each letter spelled out.”

He said ASL, or American Sign Language, which is used in the play and in Pierce College’s program for the hearing-impaired, is shorter and more symbolic.

“The first time a guy signed to me in it, I thought he was stupid,” he said. “I got the hang of it, but I hated it. . . . I still hate it.”

One of the play’s basic conflicts--whether the school should be staffed solely by hearing-impaired teachers and administrators--was eerily echoed recently by students of the Washington, D.C., college for the hearing-impaired, Gallaudet University.

“I didn’t realize at first why all the deaf students were rioting,” says Miller.

“When I found out, I felt that the situation wasn’t fair,” he said, saying the school is 100 years old, and the teacher who was passed over for the presidency had been working there for 23 years. “The woman they hired was an outsider, who didn’t even know how to sign--it made me angry,” Miller said.

“It made me awake,” adds Barton, who, after a lifetime of lip-reading, has just learned American Sign Language and now divides her time between the deaf and hearing communities.

“There are deaf and hearing-impaired people all over the United States, and we should speak up for our rights. They might not have a voice, but they should have a voice .”