Jodee Mundy is the only hearing person in her family. In Personal, she shares stories of her childhood and adulthood and opens up about the pressures she faced being a Child of Deaf Adults (CODA) and the frustrations of living in a society that failed to recognise the needs of Deaf people.
Mundy appears on stage with six large grey cubes scattered behind her, reminiscent of toys a child has not bothered to put away. She speaks to the audience verbally and through Auslan, sometimes using both, sometimes only using one of these languages. This means there are moments during the show where some people are unable understand what is being said but are still able to easily infer the information being imparted through her facial
expressions and body language. In some ways, by separating us, Mundy shows that we are more alike than we think.
Last year Jodee Mundy collaborated with Deafblind artists, Heather Lawson
and Michelle Stevens to create Imagined Touch, a tactile and sensory experience that explored the
importance of human touch and communication. The production went on to deservedly win a Green Room Award for Innovation
in Experiential Performance. In April, Mundy returns to Arts House with a new show in which she shares her own experiences of growing up as the only hearing person in a Deaf family.
Personal is based on interviews with 13 of Mundy's family members across three generations and looks at how people perceive one another and she uses these conversations to create discussions on dis/ability in the world. Of course, Mundy will also be recounting her own experiences as a Child Of Deaf Adults (CODA) and is looking forward to sharing these with her audience. "I had a pretty amazing childhood. I could talk with my hands, play music
full blast, and every Friday night we went to Deaf club where I would play with
heaps of other codas and scream at the tops of our voices while our parents
signed till the wee hours of the morning!" she recalls.
Written in 1996, Eve Ensler’s collection of monologues in The
Vagina Monologues explored issues around sexual experiences, body image, reproduction and sex
work. The groundbreaking work was an opportunity for women to reclaim the word
‘cunt’, and in 2017, Deafferent Theatre is bringing its production of the show
to the stage as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival.
Deafferent Theatre is a bilingual theatre company that seeks
to create inclusive productions, and with The Vagina Monologues
this includes telling the story through Auslan, surtitles and voice over translations (both live and
pre-recorded), which allows for engaged interaction with the performances and the
text. The cast act out several monologues, including 'Hair' and 'My Angry Vagina',
and while the play is over 20 years old, there is still relevance to the themes
being raised.
Livi Beasley, Ilana Charnelle Gelbart, Hilary Fisher-Stewart
and Marnie Kerridge work very well together as an ensemble and deliver some
strong performances, particularly from Kerridge who displays brilliant comedic
timing and produces some vivid storytelling to the audience.
The set design has the women sitting around a table,
enjoying some wine and strawberries with a shopping list written on a board
behind them listing oranges, chocolate and tampons as items needed. This
informal setting and the relaxed direction of the cast immediately creates a
sense of familiarity and honesty, and makes you feel like you are sitting out
there with these women.
New theatre company Deafferent Theatre is just a little bit deafferent, in that they create new and engaging pieces of work for hearing and deaf audiences. For their first production, presented as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival, they have chosen Daniel Keene's Black Is The Colour, which is performed entirely in Auslan.
The story revolves around two friends and their experiences with domestic violence. Catherine (Anna Seymour) is a victim of physical abuse from her husband, while her best friend Irene (Hilary Fisher) struggles to makes her understand the situation she is in. This production results in a unique exploration regarding loss of voice: in the text, the two characters have lost their voices and in reality, so too have the people of the Deaf community. There are some powerfully directed scenes by Jessica Moody where the characters express their rage and frustration by letting out a scream only to have the room remain empty with silence.
It's taken over four years and a collaboration with over twenty people for
director Jodee Mundy and Deafblind artists Heather Lawson and Michelle Stevens
to bring their live art performance Imagined
Touch to audiences. It’s a tactile and sensory experience that explores the
importance of the human touch and communication.
The show begins with Lawson - who was born Deaf and lost her sight - and
Stevens - who was born Blind and lost her hearing - introducing themselves to the
audience and recalling how they met. As they share a few stories with us, you
can’t help but start to wonder how they lead their day-to-day lives. But then the
imagination becomes reality as we are suddenly immersed into their world. We
remove our shoes and put on a pair of headphones and goggles. The soundscape in
the headphones created by Madeleine Flynn & Tim Humphrey remove much of the
sound in the room and the goggles obscure our vision, so all that we can see
are bright lights and blurry shadows.
Deafferrent Theatre is another emerging theatre company that is making their debut at the Melbourne Fringe Festival with Australian playwright Daniel Keene's Black Is The Colour. The difference here, and as the name might suggest, is that the performance is presented entirely in Auslan, and captioned in English. Deafferrent Theatre aims to create theatre that is accessible to hearing and deaf audiences and to attract new audiences to the world of theatre.
Usually, there are enough nerves from just performing a show, let alone performing your inaugural show during one of Melbourne's biggest festivals. "It's simultaneously thrilling and completely nerve-wracking!" says Ilana Charnelle Gelbart, one half of the team at Deafferent Theatre. "Jess and I have been planning this company for nearly two years so it's very exciting to finally see our theatre 'baby' taking its first steps out in to the world!"
Presented as part of the 2016 Next Wave Festival, Under My Skin
is a new dance/performance piece that explores how we choose to present
ourselves to the world and to consider the things we prefer not to
reveal. However, what makes Under My Skin stand out from any other show is that the company behind this, The Delta Project, use both deaf and hearing dancers in its productions.
With that in mind, there are visual and lighting cues for the four dancers (Anna Seymour, Amanda Lever, Luigi Vescio and Elvin Lam) to follow, but there were no discernible moments where I was able to notice these occurring, as all the dancers seemed to be intensely in tune
with the movements of each other and of their own bodies. There was a
definite sense of trust among them, which allowed the emotive
choreography by Jo Dunbar and Lina Limosani to work so well among the dancers and make their performances all the more powerful.
