All the World's A Stage

All the World's A Stage

Future Reflections Fall 1992, Vol. 11 No. 4
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ALL THE

WORLD'S A STAGE FOR THE BLIND AND SIGHTED ALIKE
by Jerry

Whittle

[PICTURE] Blind Students at the NFB Louisiana Center for the Blind gain confidence and poise through staging plays. The performance pictured about was given at the 1992 National NFB Convention.
From

the Editor: As soon as I read the following article in the May, 1992, issue

of the Braille Monitor, I immediately thought of Gunot Bunot. I never

met Ms. Bunot, and all I know of her came from a letter she wrote me about ten

years ago. (Her letter was coincidentally written the same year Jerry Whittle

begins his narrative in this article.) Something she had read in a Future

Reflections article had triggered memories of stifled childhood dreams.

She wrote to me to share some of these memories and dreams in the hopes of helping

others.
Here is

some of what she had to say:
We blind

people are not expected to be good at doing house repairs, advanced cooking,

or making things aesthetically appealing to the eye....In Sweden, where I lived

until two years ago, things are no better and no worse as far as attitudes [about

blindness] go. As a child I was told, "You can do almost anything you want.

You can become a secretary, a translator, or a teacher even." (I was considered

good in languages). "Yes," I thought to myself, "but what if

I want to become an actress or a hairdresser?" I always felt drawn to professions

involving manual skills, or things that were beauty-oriented, artistically or

gastronomically creative. But I was told, "You are so intelligent, you

would be bored." The real message was: you'll only waste your time and

cause trouble. Why would anybody want to hire you in a position like that if

they can get a sighted person that can do it twice as fast?...So I stayed within

the accepted boundaries, and so do (unfortunately) the students where I work

(Disabled Student Services, San Francisco State University). You will find most

of them in special education and social sciences. Where are the drama, P.E.,

and home economics majors? All following common prudent sense....Can we do anything

for them?
My answer

to Ms. Bunot was to put her in touch with the National Federation of the Blind

in her state. I do not know if she ever did anything about her dreams for herself

or for others, but Jerry Whittle did. Here is his story.
It all

started in the Blue Ridge Mountains of South Carolina back in 1983. Perhaps

the love of acting had started before that year for some of us who had performed

in plays in high school or college before we lost our sight. A small band of

Federationists from South Carolina decided to produce a play at a mountain camp

near Clemson University. The camp had a very large assembly hall that could

seat well over two hundred persons, and it also had a small stage with two tiny

rooms on each end that could serve as dressing rooms. We did not have any lighting;

however, a mechanical friend, Jerry Darnell, said he could build a lighting

panel, install some lights, and use a remote control to switch on and off the

stage lights as needed. We were set.
With the

full cooperation of Donald C. Capps, President of the National Federation of

the Blind of South Carolina, we chose the popular Tennessee Williams play, The

Glass Menagerie. After the four blind actors met together, we decided to

do three performances as a fund raiser for the state affiliate. None of us had

any experience as blind actors. We had heard about blind actors in New York

who did readings (no stage movement), but we wanted to act it with blocked movements

on stage and without our canes so that we could play sighted characters convincingly.

It was much easier than we anticipated. Each of the actors simply learned his

or her way around the sets as if walking around a familiar room. One of the

actresses, who had some residual sight, requested that a white line be painted

across the front edge of the stage so that she could see it and not wander too

near the edge. No other special aids were needed in the performance of this

play; however, some very memorable moments related to blindness occurred during

the three performances.
One came

when Suzanne Bridges Mitchell, who played the crippled girl Laura, was supposed

to trip and fall on some steps. When Suzanne did this scene, some members of

the audience almost ran forward to pick her up, thinking she had fallen because

she was blind. All in all, the play was great fun. The South Carolina Commission

for the Blind radio station recorded the performance and played it to the statewide

blind radio network. Also the South Carolina Education Television Network videotaped

it and broadcast it over its television network. We proved to ourselves and

to many others that we could move about a stage and perform with very little

difficulty, and some members of the cast got hooked on the theater.
When I

came to work at the Louisiana Center for the Blind in October, 1985, I set myself

a goal of getting some of the students and staff at the center involved in doing

a play. After I convinced some of them to give acting a try, we started learning

lines for Look Homeward, Angel, at a local community theater in Ruston

as a fund raiser for the Louisiana Center for the Blind, but more important,

we wanted to do it to build confidence and poise in our students and to show

the local community that we could produce and act in a legitimate play. Having

no one on staff with experience in directing, we enlisted the help of some graduate

students in the Theater Department at Louisiana Tech University. We borrowed

some costumes from the Theater Department of Centenary University in Shreveport,

and we did three performances with little difficulty.
The acting

space we used was divided into three levels. We entered at the ground level,

where the audience sat, and at the stage level. To get the third, a local building

contractor constructed a porch for us across the entire front edge of the stage.

To assure that the actors could find the different steps, doormats were placed

in front of each set. That was the only special accommodation needed to assist

mobility. At one point in the performance, my wife Merilynn had to make an entrance

into a puddle where some water was standing on the ground level from the previous

night's downpour. Before the performance, we discovered that one of the electrical

cords was also lying in this puddle. Merilynn crossed her fingers, stepped before

the audience, and began sloshing through the water while I mentally went over

all the insurance policies I had on her, searching for electrocution clauses;

but fortunately, nothing happened. The rest of the actors in the scene entered

behind her, making what was potentially the most electrifying entrance of their

lives. Over eighteen actors appeared in the play—fifteen of whom were blind—and

several more blind people got hooked on the theater.
Perhaps

the most personally rewarding time of my life as a would-be actor came as the

result of an accident. One of the instructors at the center, who had performed

in Look Homeward, Angel, decided that he wanted to audition for a play

being produced by the Louisiana Tech University Players. He persuaded Merilynn

and me to go with him to audition so that he would not feel so uncomfortable

trying out for a play with a predominantly sighted troupe. The play was William

Saroyan's The Time of Your Life, a play that I had seen at the Warehouse

Theater in Greenville, South Carolina, many years before and one that had impressed

me greatly. So Merilynn and I acquiesced and ventured to the theater with our

friend. We had obtained a copy of the script about a week before, and I had

spent much time memorizing the lines the director wanted us to recite.
When we

arrived at the audition, the director seemed very nervous in our company. He

did not expect to see two blind men walk in to audition for his play, but he

asked us to come up on stage to read our lines. Merilynn was also asked to do

some lines in (of all things) an Italian accent. All three of us gave it our

best. Since I had memorized my lines, I was able to give them added emphasis.

The director thanked us for coming and told us that he would post the list of

those who would be in the play outside the auditorium the following day.
We left

the audition feeling that there was no way that any of us would be chosen. The

next day we went by the auditorium after work and discovered to our delight

and surprise that Merilynn and I were on the list. I was to play an Arab and

Merilynn was to be an Italian mama. Our friend was not selected, but he took

the disappointing news good-naturedly.
What we

didn't realize was that this particular play would be in the American College

Theater Festival competition. In addition to the five performances in Ruston,

we would act in Hammond, Louisiana, as part of a statewide competition. We did

the play before sellout crowds in Ruston and in Hammond, and it was one of the

most rewarding things I have ever done. We won the competition in Hammond and

did one performance in Lubbock, Texas, competing against universities from New

Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas. We did not win the competition there,

but we did perform before an audience of more than four hundred. Needless to

say, I was the only blind actor there, but everybody saw my long white cane

and knew that I was blind.
The next

year I got to play old Adam in William Shakespeare's As You Like It for

the Louisiana Tech Theater by merely making a phone call to the director. I

did not have to audition for it.
Recently

a director from the Ruston Community Theater came to the Louisiana Center for

the Blind and asked some of our students to audition for a play he was producing.

Jennifer Dunnam, President of the Student Chapter of the National Federation

of the Blind of Louisiana and a former student at the center, auditioned and

got the part in Wait Until Dark. She did a superb job and plans to be

in other plays in the future. She has already performed in four of our plays.
Since that

time the staff and students at the Louisiana Center for the Blind have produced

at least one play per year. We did one production for an outdoor theater, and

we have done three at state conventions and one at a national convention. Many

blind people have gained confidence and much stage presence from these performances.
What started

in South Carolina has certainly grown into a success story, one greater then

we could ever have imagined when we began doing plays at the Louisiana Center

for the Blind. Since the center opened in 1985, we have had over sixty students

participating in plays and gaining confidence and poise as a result. Blind people

can act and do it with enough grace and ease to be invited to do other plays

by local community theaters. If any blind person has an interest in trying out

for a play in his or her local community theater, I would strongly recommend

that he or she obtain the lines ahead of time and memorize them so that greater

expression can be used. Most important, have the confidence to audition; you

may gain a whole new experience from such a venture, and a whole new segment

of the sighted community may be better educated about the talents and abilities

of blind persons.
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