By Carrie Chapter, PTC Dramaturg

In a co-production with City Theatre in Pittsburgh, PTC presented Nina Raine’s fiery, powerful family drama, TRIBES, which follows a garrulous family of intellectuals and their son, Billy, who was born deaf. The ideas of language and effective communication are vehemently challenged once Billy brings home his new girlfriend, Sylvia, who comes from a deaf family and who is going deaf herself. The politics and emotional layers of the play make for incredibly riveting performances, and our actors, led by Chicago-based director, Stuart Carden, were no exception.

Because the play, in the origin of the playwright and characters, deviates from our usual model of new American work by American playwrights, the schedule of our free PEP (Patron Enrichment Programming) events strived to be distinct from other productions. The Book Club pick included an older nonfiction book, Seeing Voices by Oliver Sacks, which details his research into the past and present of the Deaf community in its history, science, and politics. In addition to our usual two talkbacks with the cast, director Stuart Carden assumed the role for our post-show talkback as a proxy to a playwright living overseas, in which his approach and creative process were discussed with the audience. Perhaps what was most revolutionary in the programming for this production was our Special Topics panel discussion. The panel was moderated by Neil McDevitt, Executive Director of the Deaf-Hearing Communication Centre, Inc., who was also an invaluable resource to the creative team during the rehearsal period as well. As a man who was born deaf, Mr. McDevitt assembled a panel to discuss the politics of communication as it pertains to the Deaf community. To optimize total accessibility for the panel, there were four ASL interpreters, one closed captioning machine, and one CART (Communication Access Realtime Translator) system in place, so that the discussion could be understood and enjoyed by all audience members. To my memory, this is the first time I can recall a theatre in our area attempting to use this amount of access technology for a programmatic event.

Our joint production of TRIBES is currently thriving in its Pittsburgh run, and finding as much success as it found in the City of Brotherly Love.

The cast “signs” TRIBES. Photo credit: Mark Garvin.