NORTHRIDGE : Instructor and Actress Created Own Language

Darlene Allen Wittman keeps a dictionary of hand signs that she and actress Holly Hunter developed for “The Piano”--a language partly immortalized by the award-winning film and partly left on the cutting-room floor.

“It’s something that’s kind of gotten lost when people talk about the movie,” Wittman said. “People say, ‘Oh, you taught Holly Hunter sign language.’ But we actually created our own language.”

Before the 1991 filming of “The Piano,” Wittman, who teaches American Sign Language at Pierce College, and Hunter spent weeks dreaming up hand signs for Hunter’s character, Ada, a woman from an isolated area of Scotland who does not speak.

Some were motions adapted from Russian, American, Native American and English sign languages. Others the pair simply made up to fit Hunter’s dialogue. The expression for “song,” for instance, is represented by the mimed turning of sheet music.

“It was amazing to be able to create a whole language and decide from scratch how to convey something,” Wittman said, leafing through the handwritten dictionary in her Northridge apartment. “It’s sad, because no one will ever use it again.”

Unfortunately, some of the sign-language stories created for Ada to tell her daughter didn’t make the final cut of the film.

Teaching Hunter to sign was easy and gratifying, Wittman said, and Hunter went on to win a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination for her performance.

“Actors usually take to signing very quickly, because facial expressions and body language are such a big part of it,” said Wittman, who taught American Sign Language to actress Lily Tomlin for the 1975 Robert Altman film “Nashville.” “As with any language, it’s not just about what you say, but how you say it; that’s where you get the shades of meaning.”

Wittman, 44, initially was attracted to sign language for its theatrical qualities.

After her family moved to the San Fernando Valley from Illinois when she was 14, Wittman “got really close” to making it as an actor, but gave it up after years of landing no parts.

At Cal State Northridge, she met students who used sign language, dated a deaf man for two years and fell in love with the soundless form of expression.

“It’s almost easier to communicate using sign language,” Wittman said. “For deaf people, communication takes extra effort and, in a way is their top priority. . . . The culture of deaf people is probably a lot more open than other cultures.”

In the film, Hunter used movement and facial expressions, along with Wittman’s signs, to portray the depth of emotion in a strong-willed and passionate character. The last person Hunter thanked when accepting this year’s Golden Globe award for her portrayal of Ada was Darlene Allen Wittman.