STAGE REVIEWS / OPEN FESTIVAL : Deaf Troupe Personifies Color-Blind Casting

At first, the cast of visible white actors at L.A. Theatre Center playing black characters seems outrageous. Where’s Equity? No protest? What’s going on here?

It takes a few minutes to comprehend that “Inside Black Yours, Kissfist,” subtitled “Cherish Your Black Archetype,” is not racially insensitive. Quite the contrary.

These actors are deaf. They’re identifying the silence of being deaf with the silence of being black and deaf--if not black, period.

The play is psychological and partially surreal, and the white actors performing in sign language (with voice-over readers) takes color-blind casting to its apotheosis. The effect requires an adjustment on the part of an audience. But the hourlong show symbolizes deaf whites as the spirit, the anima/animus, in deaf blacks.

Writer-director Joe Castronovo and his three-member cast (Roxy Baker, Anthony Natale and Julianna Fjeld) attempt to dramatize the vacuum in American education in the context of black culture.

One character dreams of a black Three Little Pigs.

The shifting moods can get murky, but the target is clear: the perceived supremacy of a white hearing culture. The company, the International Deaf Cultural Arts and Humanities Center, has performed for deaf audiences in Europe and makes its home in Reseda.

At 514 S. Spring St., today , 8 p.m. and Saturday, 2 p.m. $10; (213) 627-5599.