How ‘Deaf Broadway’ Is Making Musical Theater Loud and Clear
To celebrate Stephen Sondheim’s 90th birthday in March, actor and director Garrett Zuercher attended a Zoom party. The plan was to watch the original stage production of Sweeney Todd with a group of Deaf and hearing friends, but as soon as the stream began, Zuercher realized it wasn’t designed for him.
The video’s captions were bare-bones, rarely indicating which character sang what line; Sondheim’s give-and-take lyrics placed the onscreen text in a losing race, heaving in the wake of the music. For Zuercher, who is Deaf, the show was suddenly opaque—the captions only made it obvious how much he didn’t understand.
“The Deaf participants […] ended up asking our hearing friends for clarification and found ourselves saying, over and over: “Oh, that’s what THAT means?” Zuercher wrote in an email. “Oh, I always thought the other character said that!”