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Keith Wann | |
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Born | 1969 (age 52–53) |
Occupation(s) | Stage actor, comedian |
Website | keithwann.com |
Keith Wann is an American comedian and performance artist. [1] [2]
Wann is the child of two deaf adults and was born in 1969. [3]
Wann is a performing ASL artist and has been featured in several short films with ASL. He currently stars in a popular ASL Children's book iTunes APP, is also a writer/actor for "Sign It! American Sign Language Made Easy" (a new Signing Time Foundation project), and has done the annual "Read for the Record" story since 2009. Wann has also done several commercials for Pepsi, appeared in Law & Order, Quantico, and several short films, and he travels the United States performing almost every weekend with his solo show and the ASL Comedy Tour.[ citation needed ]
Along with performing, Wann also teaches workshops and maintains his National Certification as an interpreter, NIC:Master and CI/CT and has been an artistic ASL consultant on video projects including the artist Sia. [4]
Wann uses his American Sign Language knowledge in performance art. [5] [ better source needed ]
Wann has interpreted several Broadway shows including School of Rock, Noises Off, West Side Story, Shrek: The Musical; Little Shop Of Horrors, Hamlet, Beauty and the Beast, and 39 Steps. He holds CI CT and NIC:Master certifications and teaches interpreting workshops focusing on Storytelling Surrogates and Improvisation for ASL Students. He also worked with Sia on her music video “Soon We'll Be Found”, appeared in several short movies, was an extra on several tv shows, and starred in a series of online Super Bowl commercials featuring sign language. As an ASL performer since 2002, he has produced several solo shows and hosted the ASL Comedy Tour 10 years in a row but now focuses on storytelling for Deaf children in the annual Read for the Record event. He is currently involved with the Signing Time Foundation producing, writing, and acting in "Sign It ASL" which is an online ASL course for adults. He is also making appearances in a popular Signed Stories App hosted by itv. He completed TDF’s Interpreting in the Theatre Program at the Juilliard School in 2007. [5] [ better source needed ]
American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is expressed by employing both manual and nonmanual features. Besides North America, dialects of ASL and ASL-based creoles are used in many countries around the world, including much of West Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. ASL is also widely learned as a second language, serving as a lingua franca. ASL is most closely related to French Sign Language (LSF). It has been proposed that ASL is a creole language of LSF, although ASL shows features atypical of creole languages, such as agglutinative morphology.
Deaf culture is the set of social beliefs, behaviors, art, literary traditions, history, values, and shared institutions of communities that are influenced by deafness and which use sign languages as the main means of communication. When used as a cultural label especially within the culture, the word deaf is often written with a capital D and referred to as "big D Deaf" in speech and sign. When used as a label for the audiological condition, it is written with a lower case d. Carl G. Croneberg coined the term "Deaf Culture" and he was the first to discuss analogies between Deaf and hearing cultures in his appendices C/D of the 1965 Dictionary of American Sign Language.
The Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, Inc (RID) is a non-profit organization founded on June 16, 1964, and incorporated in 1972, that seeks to uphold standards, ethics, and professionalism for American Sign Language interpreters. RID is currently a membership organization. The organization grants credentials earned by interpreters who have passed assessments for American Sign Language to English and English to American Sign Language interpretation and maintains their certificates by taking continuing education units. RID provides a Certification Maintenance Program (CMP) to certified members in support of skill-enhancing studies. The organization also provides the Ethical Practices System (EPS) for those who want to file grievances against members of RID. The organization also collaborated with the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) to develop the Code of Professional Conduct (CPC). The CPC Standard Practice Papers (SPP) are also available for professional interpreters to reference. RID is headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia.
A child of deaf adult, often known by the acronym coda, is a person who was raised by one or more deaf parent or legal guardian. Ninety percent of children born to deaf adults can hear normally, resulting in a significant and widespread community of codas around the world, although whether the child is hearing, D/deaf, or HH has no effect on the definition. The acronym koda is sometimes used to refer to codas under the age of 18.
Clayton Valli was an American prominent deaf linguist and American Sign Language (ASL) poet whose work helped further to legitimize ASL and introduce people to the richness of American Sign Language literature.
The Learning Center for the Deaf (TLC) is a Framingham, Massachusetts-based non-profit organization and school serving deaf and hard-of-hearing children and adults.
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Singapore Sign Language, or SgSL, is the native sign language used by the deaf and hard of hearing in Singapore, developed over six decades since the setting up of the first school for the Deaf in 1954. Since Singapore's independence in 1965, the Singapore deaf community has had to adapt to many linguistic changes. Today, the local deaf community recognises Singapore Sign Language (SgSL) as a reflection of Singapore's diverse linguistic culture. SgSL is influenced by Shanghainese Sign Language (SSL), American Sign Language (ASL), Signing Exact English (SEE-II) and locally developed signs. The total number of deaf clients registered with The Singapore Association For The Deaf (SADeaf), an organisation that advocates equal opportunity for the deaf, is 5,756, as of 2014. Among which, only about one-third stated their knowledge of Sign Language.
Rachel de Azevedo Coleman is an American producer and actress. With her sister Emilie de Azevedo Brown, she created the Signing Time! video series to teach children basic American Sign Language (ASL), which was broadcast on public television. She produces, directs, and stars in the series, and handles much of its operations as co-founder of Two Little Hands Productions.
Sean Forbes is a deaf American hip-hop artist. His long-time producer and collaborator is Jake Bass, and together they have penned over 100 songs, many of which they perform live.
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Robert DeMayo is a deaf American actor, educator, and ASL translator. He is one of the subjects of See What I'm Saying: The Deaf Entertainers Documentary (2009) who the New York Times called "staggeringly talented." He has also acted in the films Universal Signs (2008) and No Ordinary Hero: The SuperDeafy Movie (2013).
Sean Lance Berdy is an American actor, producer, writer and entrepreneur. He began his career as a child in the film sequel The Sandlot 2 and starred in Switched at Birth for five seasons. Berdy starred in Netflix's The Society. He is the founder of The Sign Language Agency, interpreting service company.
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Lottie Louise Riekehof was an American Sign Language interpreter, author, and a pioneer in the field of professional sign language interpreting. She wrote one of the first curriculums for interpreter educators, and trained interpreters and interpreter educators all over the world.
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