Deaf-led theatre company to bring reimagined Shakespeare tale to Toronto festival

As a Deaf actor and artist, Dawn Jani Birley has spent much of her career challenging misconceptions and barriers.

Now she wants to challenge the hearing audiences to examine their perceptions of Deafness and consider this: can a Shakespearean story be told with little to no words?

“Lady M,” a unique adaptation of “Macbeth” for both Deaf and hearing theatre audiences, will premiere in August at Toronto’s SummerWorks performance festival.

It is a production from 1S1 Theatre, a company Birley founded with the aim to provoke change with Deaf-led storytelling.

“Lady M” focuses on the tragic hero’s wife, Lady Macbeth, her loss, grief and resentment. Birley will play Lady M, and Sturla Alvsvåg, a hearing actor, will portray Macbeth.

The production, directed by Glasgow-based Deaf artist Ramesh Meyyappan, includes “very minimal dialogue” — not much signing or spoken words, Birley said.

“Physicality is crucial,” she said in an interview that was translated by a sign language interpreter. “We’re focusing on the physicality, on the overall being, on the space that we use.”

The set will be “full of surprises,” especially for hearing people who have never attended a Deaf-lead performance, Birley said.

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Birley, who identifies as culturally and linguistically Deaf, was born in Saskatchewan to what she calls a “third-generation Deaf family.”

She said her journey as an artist and theatre company founder has been “fascinating” but also very difficult as she navigated systemic discrimination and perceptions of Deafness as a “problem” that needed to be fixed.

“Our lives are full of beauty, but that’s not what’s portrayed. You don’t see it because you’re not part of my world … Our world is a small one. The opportunities offered to us are minuscule, in comparison to the broader artistic world,” she said.

“I’ve had to work twice as hard, three times as hard as people who can hear just to get an even playing field.”

Birley said Canada is “very behind” many other countries in accessibility, not just for Deaf people but also for disabled people and other minority groups.

“I had to leave Canada in order to pursue my dream of becoming a professional actor,” said Birley, who studied her craft in England and Scandinavia and has performed in international productions.

When she returned, Birley said she realized that not much had changed.

“Most of the time we don’t have a voice at that table. We’re just sort of put into something and told we’ve been included. That’s not working.”

She founded Toronto-based 1S1, in partnership with Why Not Theatre, because she wanted to see more stories told about Deaf people, by Deaf people on mainstream stages. Part of what drives her is hope that access and opportunities for Deaf people in Canada can improve.

With “Lady M,” she wants the audience to not think of the actors as Deaf or hearing, and to realize that there isn’t just one way of communicating.

“We need to focus on the emotions and the humanity that is being portrayed.”

The play aims to “tear things apart” for the audience and “smack people around a little,” she said with a smile.

“Come with an open mind and an open heart.”

There will be seven “Lady M” shows, starting Aug. 5., over the course of the SummerWorks festival. After that, Birley hopes to take the production on tour.

1S1 Theatre’s next planned production is “Women of Usher,” a reimagining of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

The SummerWorks festival runs from Aug. 3 to Aug. 13. Highlights also include an “immersive audio performance” inspired by Indigenous ceremony titled “The Seventh Fire,” and a staged play reading of “Truck” — a retirement speech for the last truck driver in America made obsolete by automation.

For more details about the festival, performances and ticket information, visit https://summerworks.ca/.