Whatcom Independent Review

Behind the Scenes: Deaf Director Prepares Students for Elementary School Plays

by Dave Greene
May 21-27, 2006

Dawn Stoyanoff does a one-two stomp on the gym floor and waves her hands to get kids’ attention to start drama practice. The class of just over a dozen Lummi Island Beach School 3rd-6th grade students are exactly two weeks away from the elementary school play’s opening night, and they have a lot to cover in the hour that they have together. As Stoyanoff signs the role call, Lori Abrams, a deaf interpreter she has worked with for five years, stands at the back of the class and calls their names.

Stoyanoff is a director, teacher, and actress who has acted in both hearing and deaf theater, directed deaf children at Seattle Children’s Theater, and taught American Sign Language and theater for years. She has worked with deaf and hard-of-hearing children, as well as with hearing college-age students at Western, where she will graduate this June with an M.A. in Theater Arts. But Stoyanoff never wanted to be limited to working only with deaf children, so when she saw an ad in her home community of Lummi Island that the nearby Beach Elementary School was looking for a theater director, she applied and got the job.

Clearly, Stoyanoff loves what she does. Her enthusiasm shines through whether she’s showing a child how to skip in like a rabbit or how fast to drive off stage.

“In some ways I become the interpreter; I get to interpret the piece,” said Stoyanoff through Abrams. “It’s my art and my passion.” But most important, she points out, “is the kids’ experience and the fact that it should be fun.”

The first of the plays, 9 Magic Wishes by Shirley Jackson and adapted by Stoyanoff, is an imaginative story enacted by the K-2nd graders, in which a girl magically receives nine wishes; after using nearly all them, she must decide in the end whether or not to leave a wish for someone else. The 3rd-6th graders’ play, Bumper Snickers, by Susan Snider Ostering and R. Eugene Jackson, is a series of humorous scenes that play on words through the messages of bumper stickers.

As the class practices Bumper Snickers, Abrams not only interprets Stoyanoff’s signs for the kids, she conveys her enthusiasm, frustrated sighs, and laughs. In short, she gives voice to everything Stoyanoff says and feels. When I later ask Stoyanoff about her directions through the interpreter to the kids to “project more,” she points out that though she has been completely deaf her entire life, her cues to “hearing” what is going on around her come through her interpreter.

“I can tell from the interpreter’s body language as to whether or not they’re talking loud enough or not,” said Stoyanoff. If an interpreter leans in to hear, for example, Stoyanoff knows the child needs to speak up; if the interpreter signs in a more exaggerated manner, she knows the child is speaking loudly.

Communicating through an interpreter with Stoyanoff took a bit of adjustment for the kids. 

“The first time they always talked right to the interpreter. They would say, ‘Tell her…’,  ‘Tell Dawn…’ They had to get it in their head that they need to look at me, even though the interpreter [was talking]. I would say, ‘Don’t look at the interpreter; look at the director.’ That’s pretty normal.”

But after working together since late March, the kids now focus attentively on Stoyanoff as she moves around the gym. At one point, when Stoyanoff gives one of the boys directions through the interpreter, he responds to her directly in sign language as if it was second nature.

“I’ve taught them several signs—words and numbers,” said Stoyanoff later, who spends the last five minutes of each class teaching the kids signs. They know, for example, that certain signs mean “chill out” or “pay attention.” Eye contact and finger directions are also crucial to direct communication, and the kids now pay close attention to those.

After class, the kids teach me a few signs that Stoyanoff has showed them: girl, witch, horse, Lummi Island Boys & Girls Club, and Leprechaun (“little green man”); a few boys passionately debate the correct sign for dynamite. They then share their favorite parts about acting: “Being somebody I’m not,” says one girl. “Being done with the play and knowing that you did a good job” says another. “When you mess up on your lines,” relishes one boy, “then you make it up!”

“When they get up on performance night and they have a good time,” said Stoyanoff, “that’s what’s going to be a reward for me. The rewarding part is being able to work with the kids and make a difference.”

Given the kids’ enthusiasm and communication skills they demonstrate after working with Stoyanoff, it’s clear that she already has.