Living Poetry, in Words and Sign Language

“Your brain is the driver of the bright yellow taxi

That takes you to your dreams . . .”

“Time is . . . thin like a rodent’s tail

Rough like my heart. . . . “

--Excerpts from two poems written

by 13-year-old Fausto Perez

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“I come from missing the 118 degree Fahrenheit weather

I come from missing my grandparents, aunt and uncle

I come from cooking an egg on the sidewalk

I come from two dogs and a bird

That bird is crabby.”

--Beverly Monter, 13, on the divide

between Palm Springs and Santa Monica

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Imagery, emotion, layers of meaning--the language of poetry is a natural for adolescents, a resonant voice for their roiling sensitivities and hunger for self-expression. Perez and Monter are two of 11 local middle- and high school teenagers who have explored new territory by writing poems that will be part of an unusual theatrical performance, “Poetry in Motion,” at the Fountain Theatre on Monday and Tuesday.

The show is an opportunity not only to hear poetry but also to see it: Six of the young poet-performers are deaf. While their hearing peers present staged readings of their poetry, they will perform original poems that they have created visually, in American Sign Language.

The culmination of eight-week workshops, it’s a first-time collaboration between the Fountain Theatre, one of L.A.’s highly regarded professional smaller theaters, and the 8-year-old Virginia Avenue Project, a respected theater arts program for children aged 6 to 18 that is the West Coast replication of New York’s venerable 52nd Street Project.

The idea behind the production--part of the Learning Stage, the Fountain’s new children’s educational theater program--was to explore “how deaf and hearing kids are different and the same, to see how they perceive the world around them through poetry, and then bring these two groups together and create an evening,” said Stephen Sachs, the Fountain’s artistic director and co-founder.

“We’re trying to knock down stereotypes, to get kids to know that kids are just kids.”

“I feel the hearing people

taste dryness

because when they talk

their mouths dry up. . . . “

--A tactile exploration of terra

incognita by Giovanni Miglia, 15

Miglia and the other deaf teens in the group, students at John Muir Middle School in Burbank, were taught ASL poetry by a member of the nationally touring Deafywood theater company who goes by the single name Vae. They and the Virginia Avenue Project participants were given themes as springboards to creativity: “If I Could Hear,” “If I Were Deaf,” “When I Look in the Mirror I See.”

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Leigh Curran, actor, playwright and artistic director of the Santa Monica-based Virginia Avenue Project, doesn’t use the term “at-risk” to define some of the young people whom she and other stage and screen veterans mentor and teach. They are “children growing up under difficult circumstances,” and the project’s mission is to bolster confidence, build communication skills and expand creative horizons through playwriting and play-making.

“Poetry is another way of looking at language,” Curran said, “and I also liked the idea of combining poetry that required movement in order to be clear with poetry that could be spoken to deliver images. Because our kids write plays and think and deal in dialogue a lot, and because poetry is very image-oriented, it’s teaching the kids to go into the image and express [it].

“It’s also taking them past words that are so general, like ‘cute’ and ‘fun’ and ‘wonderful,’ taking their self-expression to another level.”

Although Sachs is not deaf, sign language is one of his passions, sparked in the late 1980s when one of his own plays was adapted for ASL. In 1990, he instituted deaf writers’ workshops at the Fountain and helped launch Deaf West Theatre, now based in North Hollywood. Sachs’ own critically acclaimed 1997 play, “Sweet Nothing in My Ear,” about parents struggling with whether to have their young son’s waning hearing restored with a cochlear implant, interwove spoken and signed dialogue.

His interest in ASL poetry began in 1992 with a Fountain project called “Deaf Poet’s Society.”

“I was really enraptured by it,” Sachs said. “Sign language is a very compelling, theatrical, dramatic language, [and] sign language poetry is even more so. If you could write the words in English, it would be like:

‘sun setting

tears flow

face

I smile

a good day.’

“It’s done with hands and gestures, and it involves pantomime as well. It’s really lovely.”

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* “Poetry in Motion,” Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., Hollywood, Monday and Tuesday at 8 p.m. $5 suggested donation. Reservations recommended: (323) 663-1525.