American Sign Language

But everything faded away, and I started looking at at deaf and hearing integration as as the work of my life and um and i started writing pieces of theater for for kids uh always with a an adaptation right so i i started adapting work and um and yes neverbird happened but neverbird was really only a result of the best job I ever had, which was being, uh, working with some of my dearest friends, also theater makers at a school called Bell school in Chicago, which is, uh, Bell elementary, which is, uh, an old, very a hundred year old, over a hundred year old school.

And one of the first deaf and hearing integrated schools, which is this amazing community, right? Where, where the hearing kids are learning ASL, they take ASL classes and, and, um, gosh, it just, it was just a place that glowed.

And I got to kind of run their theater program there, you know, which sounds a certain kind of way when you, you know, people, they say, Hey, I, I wrote plays for an elementary school for 10 years.

And people can't really understand.

Yeah.

Cause I also don't know, like, I don't, I don't speak ASL.

So I don't know in some of the moments, I don't know if it's like for real or if they're doing it purely for the like cinematic bits or like whatever, or if it's just like, they're joking around of like, this guy can figure this out.

Like, I don't, I don't actually know, but I really enjoyed it.

You have to get certificates.

We also have to pay for ASL interpreters too.

People don't know about that.

You got to pay for that and all the everything and cost and taxes.

like yeah like thank you for making me laugh like i'm

sorry to be a cunt but like no one's doing it well these days yeah yeah um and i bet um so the show let me just like i won't spoil anything for you i'll try not to because i do think you should watch it but it follows uh jason bateman as clark a weatherman in st louis And David Harbour as Floyd, who works as a sign language interpreter, ASL interpreter at the across St. Louis and often works with Jason Bateman at doing weather.

And they meet like it's really it's just so funny.

They meet like covering like a hurricane or some like big storm and then they like immediately hit it off and they're like.

The kid has borderline personality disorder, uh, which you find out like later in the show.

And he's just like struggles at school.

Um, and so that and like yeah they're just having like financial problems because like Carol works for Purina which is so funny she's always wearing a Purina vest when she's at home and he is like he works as an ASL interpreter but I don't think he like makes a ton of money so it's like there's like a financial tension also And then basically Carol and Jason Bateman start like hooking up.

Oh my God.

yeah.

When Ross enters Central Perk to ask his friends if they've seen his salmon-colored shirt, he's wearing a shirt that says friend in American Sign Language.

Oh, nice.

When they're going through the CDs, Monica asks, where's the Bruce Springsteen CD? And Courtney Cox starred in Dancing in the Dark.

Chat rooms, man.

ASL.

That's right, dude.

ASL, baby.

With some real predators.

I can't even imagine the people we talk to.

So And it has been very disorientating to be standing in front of people and having a conversation with me and having no idea what's going on.

So I'm really in the place right now of continuing to learn American Sign Language with my friends and my family.

We're seven months into learning it.

I have an amazing new personal assistant, Mama of Operations, who is fluent in ASL.

And kind of what I'm saying at the top is Shakespeare is meant to be seen.

And I think a lot of companies are doing more to make that accessible for more people as well, including things like having ASL interpreters at pieces and that kind of stuff, where we can communicate some of that language to people who have never heard it.

But I think there is – there's really something to be said for seeing – for actually seeing Shakespeare performed rather than approaching it in the stuffy context of reading it out of a book or being sat still in an English class and taking turns where that guy who was picking his nose three minutes ago is now reading Polonius' speeches.

And he's like, oh, God.