THEATER : Acting Speaks Louder Than Words : At the Deaf West Theatre Company, they’re out to make theater that goes beyond just good intentions. In just a few years, critics and audiences already agree.

One of Antonin Artaud’s more enduring legacies to the modern actor was his urging, in effect, to reach through fire for a performance. For the deaf actor, the reverse is true: A performance has to be sculpted out of the ice of silence.

Up until relatively recently, it was impossible for any deaf actor to navigate a major stage role without benefit of a hearing aid or some other translating device for a medium that is, after all, based on words. But in 1967, the National Theater of the Deaf broke the ice. With the help of American sign language, the troupe demonstrated that no actor need be sidelined from the ebb and flow of human discourse by the fact that he or she couldn’t hear it.

Not only were effective performances possible, but moving ones as well. Phyllis Frelich won a best actress Tony in 1980 for her role in Mark Medoff’s “Children of a Lesser God” (which had premiered at the Mark Taper Forum). Marlee Matlin won a best actress Oscar for the film version. Both performances gave us tough, passionate women who would not be patronized. Linda Bove has been a regular on “Sesame Street” since 1975. Julianna Fjeld won a 1986 Emmy for producing the TV movie “Love Is Never Silent.”

Ed Waterstreet starred in that movie. At 51, he’s also a veteran of the National Theater of the Deaf. Four years ago he decided to stay close to home, at least as far as commercial acting jobs are concerned--which means Los Angeles. And he wanted to go on to build a theater which, like the NTD, would show that there are no limits to the ingenuity of human expressiveness--particularly when assigned to an actor. After all, a huge untapped constituency awaited him: There are an estimated 641,000 deaf or hearing-impaired people in the greater Los Angeles area.

“I had been with the National Theater of the Deaf for 15 years, touring and directing,” Waterstreet said (through translator Beverly Nero). “But I wanted to start a resident theater in one place where hearing people and the deaf could attend performances together. I wanted to do classics, adaptations, contemporary works--deaf audiences don’t get the opportunity to see a lot of theater. And I wanted to do something about the format that has hearing actors onstage interpreting for the deaf, which distracts us from the actors.”

Waterstreet established the Deaf West Theatre Company, which in its first season in 1991 operated out of the Fountain Theater in Hollywood (it has since moved to its present site on East Hollywood’s North Heliotrope). So much aggressive amateurism and good intentions pass for art these days that it was a relief on the part of theatergoers and critics alike to see that, from its inception, Deaf West worked on a satisfyingly professional level.

“This is a chance to see a top-flight actress up close and in rare form,” said Daily News reviewer Lawrence Enscoe of Freda Norman’s 1992 performance as “Shirley Valentine.” “At its best, Deaf West’s ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ throws conventional methods of evaluating spoken theater into an exhilarating tailspin,” wrote Karen Fricker in The Times, also in 1992. “Deaf West Theatre Company’s decision to produce the wordy ‘ ‘night, Mother’ seems bewildering,” Richard Stayton wrote in a review in The Times in 1994. “Yet this seemingly incongruous scheduling provides a stunning revelation about a contemporary classic. The actors’ urgency in their signing provokes even more heartbreak than would a standard presentation.”

Other interested parties concurred. Through its Comprehensive Program of Resident Theatre Production, the U.S. Department of Education awarded Deaf West two three-year grants of $375,000 each (one for children’s theater, the other for the resident company) in 1992. The company’s annual budget is $250,000. With a staff consisting of an artistic director, director’s assistant, an accountant and a development and marketing director, and considering advertising, rent, artists’ salaries and production costs, this is not a high-power budget for even a small--in this case 75-seat--theater.

“The Gin Game” and “Of Mice and Men” are among the other more established works Deaf West has produced. “Am I Paranoid?” and “His Wife” are originals; and “Cinderella” and “Aladdin” have been well-received productions for young people.

Now, with “Sleuth,” which opens Thursday, Deaf West really has its work cut out. Anthony Shaffer’s thriller, which deals with the murderous gamesmanship that takes place between a British writer and a clever house guest, relies on considerable verbal dazzle as well as hairpin plot turns. After a couple of hours of signing lines such as “If I choose to say that my wife converses like a child of 6, cooks like a Brightingslea landlady, and makes love like a coelacanth, I shall,” an actor may well need to rest his arms in a sling.

Typical of Deaf West productions, the theater provides audience headsets for translators’ simulcasts from the control booth. The actual staging is the same as that of a hearing production, which means the audience is able to focus on the actors.

“I know that ‘Sleuth’ was written by a British writer and American sign language is an American language, but I saw a different image of the play,” Waterstreet said. “Deaf audiences love thrillers. This one is being done in a different medium of expression. I thought we could see it on a whole different level. That is, like our other productions, to see a work signed and viewed is a double benefit. And seeing deaf actors working alone onstage shows us how much control they can have on their own.

“We could have had the Milo character pretend to be deaf as one of his disguises. Or we could have used a hearing actor in one of the parts. The way we have it now offers three dimensions to deaf acting performance.”

First done on Broadway in 1970, “Sleuth” is one of those time-tested vehicles which, given a requisite degree of competence, is hard to dent. Still, Waterstreet wasn’t taking any chances with less than top-flight principals. Troy Kotsur was cast as Milo (the guest) on the strength of his powerful performance as Lenny in “Of Mice and Men.” Bernard Bragg, co-founder of the National Theater of the Deaf and one-time student of Marcel Marceau, is one of the most versatile and accomplished deaf artists in the country (he plays the writer). And Waterstreet reached outside the deaf community for Dennis Erdman, one of the hottest young directors in Los Angeles.

Erdman, 35, recently directed Mary Steenburgen and Jean Smart in “Marvin’s Room” at the Tiffany Theatre and has shown an affinity for the works (and performance) of Christopher Durang, as well as other newer American playwrights.

But he’s also shown a touch for British plays. As an actor, Erdman’s first big break was understudying Tom Hulce in the Broadway production of “Equus”; he eventually took over the role of Alan Strang and then played the National Tour. Erdman directed Alan Ayckbourn’s “Woman in Mind” (with Helen Mirren, also at the Tiffany) and “How the Other Half Loves.” At other L.A. venues, he’s done “Loot,” “Otherwise Engaged,” and “Educating Rita”

“We wanted to broaden our horizons,” Waterstreet said. “Erdman’s perspective is different. He has a certain kind of discipline we haven’t seen before in breaking down a script. He’s fresh. He understands British style and can transpose it to the American idiom in a highly visual way.

“He directed ‘Wait Until Dark’ in Tokyo without understanding Japanese, so he knows how to work with a translator--plus he’s really picked up in his signing. Another thing he’s done is to pay more attention to the voices of the hearing translators, to make sure they maintain the rhythms and inflections of what the onstage actors are saying so that the performances don’t sound flat.”

“Coincidentally, I started to learn how to sign about a year ago,” Erdman says, “even though my level of signing is about that of a 5-year-old. Every sign has a logic. I wouldn’t have chosen to do ‘Sleuth’ under normal circumstances. It’s not a challenging play to direct. The audience doesn’t go on an emotional journey. But in this case, there are some unique challenges.”

In an early rehearsal, Erdman ran into some of them. “Sleuth” requires certain bits of stage business, such as pouring drinks, or brandishing a gun. To tie up a signing actor’s hands is to render him speechless. To see another actor’s back turned to him is to render him, as far as communication is concerned, blind.

There was the question of style. Kotsur is tall and rangy and restless. He’d make a good Sam Shepard character, someone who seems filled with visions of austere landscapes spotted with carrion. Bragg observably likes to build up performance out of small, discrete, firmly established blocks. Bragg reads signs. Kotsur reads reactions.

The Deaf West stage had the chaotic appearance of unassembled work, like a job shop, typical for this stage of production. An unfinished staircase led nowhere. A plywood wall with freshly mounted windows stood starkly unpainted, though the smell of paint was strong everywhere. Planks and flats lined the walls at odd angles; tables, chairs and trashy minutiae were strewn throughout.

In the middle, Kotsur and Bragg tried to hook onto a common performance level like vessels clumsily docking in a storm. They didn’t appear angry, but some of their frenzied gesticulations made it clear they weren’t seeing eye-to-eye. (Their offstage demeanor toward each other is respectful, even admiring.)

Erdman, who was sitting in a front row theater seat, stood up. The cut of his reddish-brown hair, and his rounded, dark-rimmed eyeglasses give him a neo-Brechtian look. He’s slender, but the casual erectness of his stance suggests someone who knows what he’s about. He seemed undaunted by the chaos of the room, and the uncertainty of the actors. “In two weeks there’ll be no pauses,” he told them. “I’m not concerned right now over your questions, ‘Why am I moving this way?’ ‘Why is he moving that way?’ In a week, I will be.”

“I’ve learned a lot from this experience already,” Erdman said later. “How ignorant a hearing person can be about deaf culture, for example. And the directness of communication. I don’t mean to make a sweeping generalization, but American sign language is very succinct and clear. It’s not abstract or vague at all.”

In rehearsal, Erdman’s observation about the logic of signs was apparent to the untutored observer. Troy’s line, “I stand innocent, bewildered and aggrieved,” was accompanied by a twisting circular motion of his hand over his head, signaling vertigo. When Bragg said, “Sex is the game, with marriage the penalty,” the sign for sex was fluttering hands conjoined at the base, like copulating birds.

“I played Carol Burnett’s son in ‘Friendly Fire’ and vowed ‘Never again,’ ” Erdman said. “I realized what a terrible actor I was. But directing is something else. I’m very analytical. I have that third eye. What I learned from John Dexter, who directed ‘Equus,’ is that your heart will always go out to a character who struggles to survive rather than play the victim. Every actor has his own way of communicating. The same is true here.”

Kotsur, who was born in Arizona, has traveled the world and worked in several productions with the National Theater of the Deaf; he’s also done Off Broadway and television. Bragg, who was born, as he puts it, “in the great state of Brooklyn,” has written numerous plays and books, including an autobiography, “Lessons in Laughter.” He toured 38 nations in 1977, sponsored in part by the U.S. State Department. He starred in the PBS series “The Quiet Man,” among other shows. He’s just concluded an artist-in-residence stint at Gallaudet University, and is a 1995 Fulbright Scholar.

Still, another opening, another show, means for these actors another chance at a breakthrough into more visible mainstream careers--although their odds are steeper than most. They sat around after rehearsal one night to talk about their lives in the theater. Both are hopeful--Kotsur because he’s young and Bragg because he’s seen the culture of the deaf gain recognition around the world. He compares its inroads to those of the civil rights movement.

“If we can gain public interest, we can continue to grow,” he said. “Deaf West’s philosophy is to bring hearing and deaf people together, just like blacks and whites. Deaf people have been so isolated.”

* “Sleuth” runs Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m., at 660 N. Heliotrope Drive. Ends March 12. General admission, $15; students and senior citizens, $12; groups, $10. For information or reservations: (213) 660-4673 voice; (213) 660-8826 TDD.