By Michelle Hines, University Relations
Contact: (336) 334-5371
Posted 12-5-06
Rachel Briley
GREENSBORO, NC – A theatre professor at UNCG is taking on a big challenge: crafting a quality production that appeals to both deaf and hearing audiences.
Rachel Briley, who oversees the North Carolina Theatre for Young People, will spend several weeks in Salt Lake City, Utah, directing a youth theater production in conjunction with the 2007 Winter Deaflympics.
The play, based on Louis Sachar’s “Sideways Stories from Wayside School,” runs Feb. 1-4 at Kingsbury Hall on the campus of the University of Utah. She has cast both deaf and hearing actors, both children and adults.
Theater artists in Utah called Briley because of her expertise in both drama and sign language. A graduate student will cover her classes until she returns.
“I think there will be some really interesting things that I’ll learn,” she said. “We have to kind of muddle through the muck together. It’s sort of like the lotus flower analogy. We’re all sitting there in the mud together and we’re gonna blossom out together. You have to push the boundaries and challenge the existing art form.”
Briley, who joined the UNCG Theatre Department faculty five years ago, first became interested in signing while working as a ski instructor in Park City, Utah. That summer she was assigned to work the Alpine Slide and encountered some deaf patrons. “I couldn’t communicate with them. It broke my heart,” she said. That’s when she decided it was her responsibility to learn sign language. She taught at Gaullaudet University and Western Michigan University before coming to UNCG.
Briley looks on her work in Utah as a way to pioneer innovative theater techniques to bridge the gap between the hearing and the deaf.
“This positions us between the two worlds with the opportunity to have this be a unifying adventure,” she said. “It’s a consciousness-raising acting activity.”
