Canadian Deaf Theatre

Last updated
Promotional image from 1988 Canadian Deaf Theatre.JPG
Promotional image from 1988

Canadian Deaf Theatre is Canada's only anglophone deaf professional theatre company. [1] Its philosophy is "A belief in the interest and inherent natural ability of deaf people to act and entertain on a serious professional level and to offer something different from that of the hearing/speaking theatrical medium".

Contents

CDT was founded in 1989 by Lewis Hartland (born June 16, 1955), a former member of the Canadian Theatre of the Deaf. It is based in Cranbrook, British Columbia. Opening night for Varieties, the company's first production, was January 10, 1990. The first performances starred Hartland and hearing actress, Toni Miller, a native of Prince George, British Columbia, who was later replaced by Hartland's deaf wife, Constance Alice (née Harrison).

Performance

Presented in mime, sign mime, pantomime, visual vernacular, theatrical clown, American Sign Language, ASL poetry and mime with masks, CDT's performances are designed to delight both deaf and hearing audiences. The company also offers workshops for children and adults on such topics as visual theatre techniques, storytelling, creative drama, the dynamics of communication and mime. The workshops for deaf children are designed to "enhance the student's power of perception, encourage their talents and skills in expressing themselves creatively, and increase their appreciation of the theatre." [1]

History

Founder and artistic director, Hartland was born in Nelson, British Columbia, and became deaf at the age of eight months from spinal meningitis. While a student at the Jericho Hill Provincial School for the Deaf in Vancouver, British Columbia. (1960–1972), he also took special instruction from a professional mime professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia (1970). He trained at the Canadian Mime Theatre School in 1977, took an actor's lab with Polish actor Ryszard Cieslak (1977), and presented solo mime performances as Lewis the Mime in Canada and the U.S. from 1977 to 1989. He was one of the founding members of the Canadian Theatre of the Deaf and performed with that company in 1976 and 1977. In 1977 Hartland founded the Deaf Mime Company of Toronto, and in 1982, he established the Ontario Theatre of the Deaf; both companies later disbanded. In 1988 and 1989, he studied and performed in the United States with the National Theatre of the Deaf in Chester, Connecticut. Enabled by the awarding of grants by the Canada Council for the Arts, Hartland also attended advanced studies with NTD. In the summer of 1989, he was one of the invited performers at The Deaf Way Conference and Festival in Washington, D.C. While there, he was approached by a representative of the Canadian Cultural Society of the Deaf, who encouraged him to form what became the Canadian Deaf Theatre. CDT was then founded in 1989 with the subsequent establishing of a board of directors in Cranbrook, British Columbia, in 1990. CDT received significant provincial and federal grants as well as private donations.

Connie Hartland (b. March 23, 1955) is a consummate performer in her own right. She was born hard of hearing in Burnaby, British Columbia, as a result of maternal rubella (she is now profoundly deaf), and attended several schools including Jericho Hill Provincial School (1960–1965), the Herbert Symonds Public School in Montreal, Quebec (1965–1966), the Ontario School for the Deaf, Milton (1966–1971 and 1973–1974), and the Ontario School for the Deaf in Belleville (1971–1973). Prior to joining her husband on stage, she travelled through Alaska presenting workshops in mime, and appeared on television in Toronto, Ontario, with her puppets.

At the beginning of each show, the couple's hearing son Samson Hartland (b. May 5, 1979) serves as interpreter while his father introduces the concept behind Canadian Deaf Theatre and explains something about their techniques. [1]

Present

In the summer of 1992, the Hartlands moved to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, where they owned and operated a store called Last Frontier Sports Cards and Comics. Hartland hopes to move the CDT from Cranbrook, B.C. to Whitehorse one day and establish it in the Yukon with a new board of directors. He coaches acting on the side, and both he and his wife are active in the local Whitehorse Deaf community, advocating for such things as TDD access and special long-distance rates (50 percent discount) for deaf telephone users in the Yukon and Northwest Territories (a struggle in which they were assisted by federal New Democratic Party leader Audrey McLaughlin (Member of Parliament for Yukon Territory) and were successful in achieving). In 2003, they were also successful in lobbying the City of Whitehorse, Yukon to provide closed captioning of its publicly broadcast City Council meetings, making it the first municipality in Canada to offer such service.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whitehorse</span> Capital and largest city of Yukon, Canada

Whitehorse is the capital of the Yukon, and the largest city in Northern Canada. It was incorporated in 1950 and is located at kilometre 1426 on the Alaska Highway in southern Yukon. Whitehorse's downtown and Riverdale areas occupy both shores of the Yukon River, which rises in British Columbia and meets the Bering Sea in Alaska. The city was named after the White Horse Rapids for their resemblance to the mane of a white horse, near Miles Canyon, before the river was dammed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1898 in Canada</span>

Events from the year 1898 in Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tony Penikett</span> Canadian politician

Antony David John Penikett is a mediator and negotiator and former politician in Yukon, Canada, who served as the third premier of Yukon from 1985 to 1992.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Horace King</span> Canadian politician (1873–1955)

James Horace King, was a Canadian physician and parliamentarian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erik Nielsen Whitehorse International Airport</span> Airport in Yukon, Canada

Erik Nielsen Whitehorse International Airport is an airport of entry located in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. It is part of the National Airports System, and is owned and operated by the Government of Yukon. The airport was renamed in honour of longtime Yukon Member of Parliament Erik Nielsen on December 15, 2008. The terminal handled 294,000 passengers in 2012, representing a 94% increase in passenger traffic since 2002. By 2017, this number had risen to 366,000. Air North is based in Whitehorse.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Save-On-Foods</span> Western Canadian supermarket chain

Save-On-Foods is a chain of supermarkets located across Western Canada, owned by the Pattison Food Group.

Yukon Energy Corporation is a Crown corporation that is the primary producer of electricity in the Canadian territory of Yukon. It also distributes electricity to a small number of locations not served by the privately-owned ATCO Electric Yukon. YEC was established in 1987 to take over the Yukon assets of the Northern Canada Power Commission and is currently organised as a subsidiary of the Yukon Development Corporation. The company's headquarters is in Whitehorse, Yukon near the Whitehorse Rapids hydroelectric generating station.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Theatre of the Deaf</span> American theatre company

The National Theatre of the Deaf (NTD) is a Connecticut-based theatre company founded in 1967. It is the oldest theatre company in the United States with a continuous history of domestic and international touring, as well as producing original works. NTD productions combine American Sign Language with spoken language to fulfill the theatre's mission statement of linking Deaf and hearing communities, providing more exposure to sign language, and educating the public about Deaf art. The NTD is affiliated with a drama school, also founded in 1967, and with the Little Theatre of the Deaf (LTD), established in 1968 to produce shows for a younger audience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Burnaby South Secondary School</span> High school in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

Burnaby South Secondary is a public high school in Burnaby, British Columbia, and it serves the South Slope, Burnaby neighbourhood, and Southern Burnaby. It is one of the eight high schools within School District 41 Burnaby, and it currently contains approximately 1700 students.

The Territorial Court of Yukon is the lower trial court in the court system of the Canadian territory of Yukon. The court sits permanently in Whitehorse but also provides services in 14 other communities including Dawson City and Watson Lake.

The Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation (French: Fondation Canadienne pour la Revitalisation Rurale) (CRRF) is a private organization in Canada that works to revitalize and increase the sustainability of rural Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">British Columbia School for the Deaf</span>

The British Columbia School for the Deaf is a provincial school in Burnaby, British Columbia with day programs serving deaf and hard-of-hearing students. The school teaches secondary students. It serves around 50 students and shares a campus with Burnaby South Secondary School for hearing students.

Craig Kochan is a Canadian curler from Toronto. He has played competitively in both Northern and southern Ontario and in the Yukon. As of 2019, he has won three Northern Ontario junior titles, the Yukon men's championship, a Northern Ontario mixed title and has played in seven Ontario provincial championships, two Northern Ontario provincial championships and two Yukon championships.

This is a list of elections in Canada scheduled to be held in 2018. Included are municipal, provincial and federal elections, by-elections on any level, referendums and party leadership races at any level. In bold are provincewide or federal elections and party leadership races.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prime Minister's Youth Council</span>

The Prime Minister's Youth Council is an advisory board created by the Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau in 2016. Currently, 10 Canadian youth aged 16 to 24 comprise the non-partisan board. Members advise the prime minister on education, economy, climate change and other issues affecting youth.

Lilias Marianne Ar de Soif Farley was a Canadian painter, sculptor, designer, and muralist in realism and abstraction. In 1967, she was awarded the Centennial Medal for Service to the Nation in the Arts. She was an alumna of the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts and was a member of the school's first graduating class.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Clifton F. Carbin; Dorothy L. Smith (2 May 1996). Deaf heritage in Canada: a distinctive, diverse, and enduring culture. McGraw-Hill Ryerson. ISBN   978-0-07-551378-0 . Retrieved 21 March 2011.