This is the second show I have seen performed by deaf artists to mark BSL (British Sign Language) Week. By sheer coincidence I had been for a hearing test that morning when I was told that I would now need to wear hearing aids, as that particular sense had deteriorated markedly since my last check-up. I also had my eyes examined earlier in the week and it seems that they too are on the blink (pun intended!). Oh! The joys of getting old – make that being old.
The play in question was a one-woman show, although its star and co-writer, along with Mike Kenny, Jenny Sealy, was accompanied by her ‘terp’ for the evening, Jude Mahon, who also helped out when needed. Terp is short for interpreter, in case you were wondering – I was.
The piece began with Ms Sealey giving us a description of herself and then a tour of the set, which was two cupboards and a sink unit, so that didn’t take long. This was followed by a crash-course on how to help deaf people understand what you are saying, and various other hints and tips to help them out. She revealed that she had been deaf since the age of seven when, during a play fight with a fellow pupil at primary school, she hit her head on the playground surface. On returning home she realised that she couldn’t hear anybody, or anything.
Jenny Sealey on returning home after the play fight.
Being told that nothing could be done until she reached the age of sixteen when her body would be robust enough to stand the treatment, she accepted that she would live in silence for the next nine years. Not only was this a misdiagnosis, but it also revealed the attitude to deafness prevalent within her family, who thought that if they used sign language it would make her lazy and thus deter her from concentrating on getting better.
Just as I was resigned to being delivered a lesson on the affliction, the mood changed to something much lighter, when the door of one of the cupboards was opened, revealing ten bags of flour which were removed one by one, given people’s names and distributed to members of the audience, all except for one which was locked away again. The recipients were told to hold them like babies, which they obediently did.
The motive for this somewhat eccentric behaviour was then explained. The original idea was that Jenny Sealey was going to narrate her life story, concentrating on the revelation of various family secrets, but she had since read a book called Flour Babies by Anne Fine, and liked it so much that she decided to use the concept as a means by which to give her tale a novel twist, which it certainly did.
When I began to write this article and do a bit of research, I was saddened to note that the Leeds Playhouse performances were the final ones in the tour. Nevertheless, I am not going to reveal the bombshells dropped and the twists and turns involved, in case Graeae (pronounced Grey Eye) Theatre Company decide to give it another airing, which I really hope they do.
As well as the bags of flour, which were named after the members of Ms Sealey’s family and other characters in the story, the way in which her reminiscences were revealed was also very inventive. She was born in Nottingham, where her father was a partner in a photography business, so the narrative was illustrated by photographs removed from a box in the other cupboard. The sink unit became a developing tray and the image of each snap projected onto a screen to the rear of the set. It began as a white sheet with the photograph slowly emerging, as it would do in a darkroom, a motif expanded upon by the tops of the three units emitting a red light. The finished print was then hung on a line to dry, although I doubt it would have lasted long as the rinsing and fixing stages were omitted! One nit, duly picked.
My chat up line when I did did photography. ‘Let’s go into a dark room and see what develops’. I’m still single!
There is a fairly long list of creatives involved so I would ask you to follow the link at the end of this piece to identify them, read more about Graeae Theatre Company, as well as catching a trailer for this play. I must make one exception though, which is that the Video Design and Captioning were by Jonah Sealey Braverman, Jenny’s son, who has followed in the family’s footsteps insofar as visual media are concerned.
Far from being a dry lecture on deafness, the evening turned out to be a most entertaining one, providing laughs, tears, and the occasional F bomb, done in the best possible taste of course! I really do hope that you get a chance to see it sometime as you will certainly leave the performance space uplifted, and probably thankful that your family doesn’t have the same number of skeletons lurking in closets as Jenny Sealey’s. If it does then I hope you live in a stately home as you will need the space!
As promised, please go to https://graeae.org/ to find out more about the company. For Self-Raising either follow the link on the home page or go to https://graeae.org/event/self-raising/
To see what is in store at Leeds Playhouse it is https://www.leedsplayhouse.org.uk/whats-on/
Photographs by Tim Makkonen.
Before I finish this piece, I would like to add a couple of thoughts of my own. It is my website so there!
As I began by saying, I had both an eye test and a hearing assessment within the past week, which indicated that I needed to change the prescription of my glasses and obtain a couple of hearing aids. It struck me whilst researching into doing this, how differently we treat eye and ear care. Perusing the relative costs it was amazing that the more you pay for glasses, the more conspicuous they become. Designer frames are not for shrinking violets as they are there to draw attention to the items, if not by their size or eccentric colour schemes, then by having the maker’s name brandished along the arms. When it comes to hearing aids, however, the opposite applies. The more expensive the instrument, the smaller and more discrete it is. The megabucks ones are buried in the ear canal so are totally invisible. Why, I wondered is it cool to wear glasses but seemingly stigmatic to rely on hearing assistance. Given this, it baffles me that it is now de rigueur to wander around the streets or appear on Zoom calls sporting headphones or little white earbuds.
What is needed is for Apple, James Dyson or one of the big designer brands such as Armani or Gucci, to come up with hearing aids which will turn heads in admiration and make it less of an embarrassment for people to own up to be hard of hearing. I know I will wear my new tech with pride.
Tyke It To The Limit 