Interpreting Faye Driscoll's “Play": The Art of Audio Description and ASL Interpretation

This post is an excerpt from my article on Sixty Inches From Center, which supports and promotes art and writing that thrives primarily outside of mainstream historical narratives.

None of the typical rules of a play apply here. Then again, when you come to a performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, you aren’t really expecting typical, are you? Play is the second performance in a series called Thank You For Coming, created by Bessie Award–winning director and choreographer, Faye Driscoll. This performance “uses the ritual of storytelling to explore our reliance on stories to relate to one another and form identities as individuals and citizens.” What begins as a communal audience-participation on stage quickly delves into a parody of an absurd theater act. Employing multiple meanings of the term “play,” the cast performs a drama but an allowance for improvisation leaves room for the actors to engage in the more fanciful version of “play” as well.

Play is also atypical in its breaking of the fourth wall. Not only does a sound engineer remain on stage, occasionally being called into the action, but Driscoll herself joins the cast. At times she is grabbing props or directing the actors, as if it were a rehearsal that we’ve all snuck into. In the midst of the action, Driscoll even leads a rock-and-roll number, worthy of any indie set list. The show concludes with a nod to its participatory beginning. When initially taking their seats, audience members were asked to complete a sentence—mad-libs-style—on a notecard, which was then collected. In near-complete darkness, Driscoll reads the dozens of notecards in succession before scattering them on to the stage floor. Some are melancholy, others comical, but mostly it’s kind of thrilling when you hear your own come to the top of the pile before she’s quickly on to the next. Driscoll holds a flashlight to her face, as if telling ghost stories around a campfire. The only other figure seen on stage is the large shadow cast by the American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter, signing vigorously as she speaks.

The interpreters and audio describer played their own critical roles because this was one of the MCA’s so-called relaxed performances, which “are for people, with or without disabilities, who prefer some flexibility in regards to noise and movement in the theater.” In addition to ASL and audio description, audience members are free to move about the theater without some of the conventions that more traditional theater settings might mandate.

Read the rest of this piece at Sixty Inches From Center.