Voice Acting--the stuff of life!

Today is the stuff life is made of. I volunteer weekly (when health permits, anyway) at the local state school for Deaf kids, helping out during after school electives. This term I was thrilled to get to work with the elementary drama group. I love acting, I love that age of kids, and I love signing…how much better does it get? (one more better, but I’ll get to that!)

Sometimes it was a little challenging because most of the kids only had a line or two in the skit, meaning at any given time during rehearsal there were about 12 bored little kids waiting for their turn, LOL. But that gave us volunteers something to do (help keep them out of trouble).

Young kids can be a challenge to understand in any language, and many deaf kids get no access to language until they arrive at school--putting them behind. Of course, it’s my second language, so that adds to the challenge. I started volunteering there (off and on) three years ago. It’s exciting to see my progress in receptive skills since then. Now I can understand pretty much everything going on, even overheard conversations (oh my, the little six-year-olds’ are sooo adorable, even when they are mad, haha. ASL is such an expressive language and they take full advantage of it! “If you do that, I’ll cry and cry! I’ll cry a roomfull of tears and drown in them!”).

The grand performance was tonight. On Tuesday near the end of practice we suddenly discovered that, contrary to what we assumed, there would be no voice interpreter for the play. Some of the audience doesn’t know sign, and the students really wanted their hearing guests to be able to understand the play they’d worked so hard on. Guess who got called on? You guessed it--me! Of course, I can’t technically interpret yet, but because we’re working with a script and get to practice with the actors it’s considered “voice acting” instead of interpreting.

I’ve loved reading out loud or doing dramatic readings with all the voices for as long as I can remember, and voice acting for real live people instead of fictional written characters is even better! I’ve had the opportunity to voice act for plays at the school before, and loved it. Though that time I actually got to prep and practice a bunch ahead of time, ha. This time we had a total of one afternoon of rehearsal. I asked a classmate to help me, so we could do the back-and-forth dialog. Of course, I’d seen the play (in bit and pieces) as they’d been learning it, but my classmate hadn’t seen any of it and wasn’t familiar with the kids.

The afternoon rehearsal today was pretty important. Yeah. Well. Both of us ended up stuck in freeway traffic. For almost an hour and a half. Meaning: we completely missed the rehearsal. Boo for forgetting it was Memorial weekend and realizing that meant everyone and their fifteenth cousin would be on the freeway.

Allrighty then. Thank God for a laidback group of people. We were able to at least talk over the script with the assistant director and introduce my classmate to the students and their roles. Then, right before the performance started, the kids went through the play one last time out on the back patio. Phew. We voiced it and worked out a few kinks and were ready to go!

It went marvelously. Of course there were mistakes, mostly things like voicing a line for the king with a high-pitched voice and the queen with a low voice--oops--but overall it went quite well. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as being rewarded with a ripple of laughter from the audience for a line well-acted and well-voiced. The kids did a great job of ad libbing and knowing that "the show must go on" when prop problems showed up, even when the princess (from Princess and the Pea) tumbled right off the tall bed with the air mattresses and covers crashing down on top of her! It rather added to the comic effect of the play.

After our elementary kids’ skit, the high school students did a play (without a voice interpreter). Wow. They did an incredible job with acting and props. It was beautiful.


[OK, survey--and I honestly want to know. I sat down to write a brief post about my day, and it turned into a page-long novel. Do you guys like reading my accounts with lots of details like this, or would you rather have a brief account with just the main info and a few funny anecdotes?]

Acceptance

This week I’m volunteering at a Literacy Faire camp for Deaf kids. The kids are in five groups, each studying and then performing an adapted story of Hans Christian Anderson. I’m on a voice acting team, which means when the kids act in ASL, we’ll be reading the script out loud in English so non-signers can follow along.

I love doing dramatic readings and playing around with different voices, so this is extra fun because I also get to be working with sign language and kids, too. Besides preparing for voice acting, we’re helping out in the classrooms as much as we can.

Today I worked with the 1st and 2nd graders. That’s such a fun age! The kids are old enough to go to the bathroom themselves, hehe, but not so old they have massive chips on their shoulders. They are so accepting of everyone at that age. We have nine kids in a wide range of signing levels, ethnic backgrounds, and a pretty even mix of boys and girls, including one with some medical issues. For a minute I thought I might have a problem when one asked if I was Deaf or hearing and was rather shocked at my answer. “Hearing people aren’t allowed!” but they quickly seemed to forget my “shortcoming”, and accepted me fine.

My back pain mostly stayed under control, despite the toddler-sized chairs and tables. I’d love prayer that I can continue the week without problems. A couple of the kids were sick, too, so hopefully no one else will get it.

I’ve just finished writing the rough draft of that classroom’s script, and Thursday we should have all of them ready. Then we’ll be able to start playing around with voices and practicing for the voice acting!

I think I’d enjoy teaching…as long as I didn’t have to sit in pee wee chairs all day every day! :-p

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A wee bit o' lollies

Yes, I know this blog title is mixing Scots and Aussie expressions--read on and you’ll see why. ;-)

This morning (it’s Sunday here), we went to a church that has a Deaf ministry. Because American Sign Language (ASL) and Australian Sign Language (Auslan) are each languages completely different from English and from each other, it was a bit of a challenge to communicate with the Deaf at that church. However, I learned the Auslan manual alphabet and a few signs before I came, and many of them knew a little of ASL fingerspelling, so we managed to communicate with only a little trouble. Australian and American Deaf culture seems very similar--I felt very comfortable chatting with them.

Those who don’t have an interest in signing, pardon me while I ramble for a minute--feel free to skip over the next two paragraphs. ;-)

I find the two-handed Auslan manual alphabet quite awkward, but I learned it pretty quickly. Of course, being able to do the alphabet in order and actually using it to spell or read a word are totally different things, but I actually did okay. Just a few of ASL and Auslan signs are the same, and quite a few are the same or similar sign but completely different meanings (which can be a bit confusing).

The two interpreters at the church were volunteer interpreters who didn’t have interpreting training. They did a lovely job. I found it interesting, but not surprising, that it seemed they were using the equivalent phenomenon to a mix of what we call Pidgin Sign Language and Signed Exact English-- which is ASL (or in this case Auslan) signs being used in an English grammatical structure. It’s a common contact language used by hearing or non-native signers who are not yet fluent in ASL.

The church was having a special celebration this morning--it was the twentieth anniversary of an American couple’s Aussie ministry in that church. At one point they set off a huge explosion of streamers. There was a Deaf and Blind lady who has a dog guide, and they actually had to take them out of the sanctuary before they could set off the streamers. I guess legally there can’t be any animals nearby when they set it off.

The guest speaker was from Scotland and he had a wonderful very strong accent. His sermon was on how all Christians are champions and we must never give up. We can’t be “to’l plonkers”, that is, losers, hehe.

After church we picked up Chrissy and went to the outdoors Heritage Market and wondered around the shops of homemade products and little knickknacks. This lovely water wheel is there, so we paused for a pic by it.

There were a number of musicians scattered around, and we stopped to watch and chat with an Aborigine, playing a didgeridoo. It makes a fascinating sound! A didgeridoo is the long wooden pipe with a bulb shape at the end, like you can see in the photo. The musician actually can breath in through his nose at the same time as he’s blowing on the didgeridoo, meaning he can play an unbroken stream of music.

The name of the instrument is an onomatopoeia. The traditional song played by has a melody that sounds like “didgeridoo.” He did all sorts of sounds with it, even telling stories with sound effects. He would tell us what the story was about, and then use hand motions with one hand while he played a melody with sound effects like a truck rumbling by, a horn, police siren, or animal sounds.

There is an Asian Noodle shop in the market that serves gluten free noodle dishes (Chrissy is a celiac). It was delicious! I got a egg noodles with chicken and vegetables, with a light hint of peanut sauce and coconut milk. The servings were huge and I barely made a dent in mine. Will have plenty leftover for lunch tomorrow! Norm was a “guts” and ate all his. ;-)

But best of all, lol, we found a lolly shop. Those who know me, tease me about how much candy I eat, so I had to get a pic in front of it. (I eat so much candy is that it’s one snack I can have without it making me sick--that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it! LOL!)
After we got home, Chrissy had a rest as she was quite worn out from walking, and was hurting a lot. Tomorrow we’re renting a wheelchair for a few months, so that will make going out easier on her. While she was resting, Norm took me for a short driving lesson so I could get used to driving on the “wrong” side of the road. It actually wasn’t too hard, and I adjusted quickly. Chrissy has a small car, so that helped. Now I’ll be able to take us places if we need to go out while Norm is out of town or at work.

Here’s a link to a few more pictures:
http://s46.photobucket.com/albums/f138/sparrowsflight/Amy%20Down%20Under/

Signing Camp: Interpreter of the Caribbean

I hope ya'll had a wonderful and blessed Independence Day (or regular ol' 4th of July for those who don't live in the US ;-) ). I laided low Wednesday because I caught a bad cold from a couple of campers at total immersion sign language camp, but it was still a good day.

Speaking of signing camp, here's some more about it. :-D

All the campers were divided into groups of four, and each group created a humorous skit and practiced it throughout the week to perform on the last night. The groups were created with varying levels of signing skills put together, making communication a challenge at times. However, our group didn’t have any big problems and the skit came together nicely.

As we were brainstorming, someone in my group mentioned a popular Deaf joke. So I changed it from a bank robber and a backyard to pirates and a desert island (arrrr!) and threw together a rough draft skit in about a half an hour, to see if that was an idea we wanted to run with. Heh, everyone was very impressed with it (including the teacher--who is an actor himself). The others in my team added some great elements to it and it was a big hit on Saturday night. I particularly liked the title, “Interpreter of the Caribbean.” Hehehe.

Basically the story (our version) is about two Deaf people who are shipwrecked on an island. They stumble upon a treasure chest, and just then spot a pirate ship approaching. They hurry to hide the gold, and then try to hide themselves, but the ship reaches the beach before they have time.

The two pirates become angry when they find that their gold is missing, and quickly spot the two trespassers who they deduce must have hidden the chest. In the shouting and threatening that follows (with the very effective means of a sword), the Deaf people finally convince the pirates that they won’t be able to reveal the location of the chest until they have an interpreter.

One of the pirates sail off to find an interpreter and manages to kidnap one and drags her back to the island. Upon the threat of death, given through the interpreter, the Deaf people quickly reveal the location of the buried chest.

They reveal it to the interpreter, that is. The interpreter, however, sees a prime opportunity to make a fortune, and announces that the Deaf person refused to tell where the chest was. Oh my. Needless to say, the pirates aren’t too happy and drag the Deaf person off to walk the plank, forgetting about the interpreter who rushes to fill her pockets with gold coins.

The original joke ends there, but our story has a twist of conscience. As the interpreter rejoices over her wealth, she hears the cries of the drowning Deaf person and gives in, throwing a rope to rescue her. Now the two live happily ever after, rich, friends, and

STUCK on a desert island forever.



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Signing Camp: No Voice

I just got back from a total immersion sign language camp. It was great! There were about 47 adults and young adults there, mostly from Oregon and Washington, but a few other states as well. The eight teachers are all Deaf and were wonderful.

I have tons to talk about, hehe, so I’ll tell all about my week in a few different posts.

Since it was total immersion, we weren’t allowed to use our voices at all. Before I left, everyone was teasing me because I don’t tend to stay quiet for very long. ;-) But I didn’t have a problem. It was more frustrating for the beginner signers, but my skills are enough that I could generally at least get my idea across and understand what was being said. I really appreciated having five days of full immersion.

On Saturday we went to Saturday Market--an outdoors market with vendors selling all sorts of different kinds of things. We had to pretend we were deaf and interact with the vendors without using voices. I found that everyone was very kind and did their best to figure out how to communicate with me. For most of the vendors, we could use gestures to communicate, and they figured out to hold up how many fingers the cost was. Because of my food allergies, I had to do more written communications with the food vendors. The first one I tried just looked blankly at my paper asking if the meat pockets had tomatoes in them. I realized he didn’t speak or read much English, so I tried someone else and found something I could eat.

A few of the other campers had some funny stories. It’s rather funny to be able to hear what people are saying about you, when they think you can’t. One person was trying to buy something and heard the following conversation between the vendors:

“Hey, doesn’t your uncle know signs?”

“Oh, yeah, I think so.”

(since the uncle wasn’t there, this was hardly helpful information)

“Hmm… Hey! Maybe he can read.”

(LOL!)

They write a note. The camper (he must have some writing blood in him somewhere) then actually edited the English spelling and grammar of the note, answered it, and handed it back. We laughed so hard when he told us about that!

One of the Deaf teachers voices really well, and she was having a bit of trouble communicating with a food vendor at the Saturday Market. So she looked around to make sure no campers were watching and then voiced that she didn’t want onions. Ha! Just then four campers came around the corner and caught her in the act. Too funny.

On the last morning of camp we were allowed to speak. It was so funny to hear everyone’s voices. It was like, “Wow, I didn’t know you had an accent.” Or, “Oh, your voice is deeper than I expected.”

Now that I’m home, instead of being all excited to use my voice, I’m feeling sign withdrawal and keep trying to sign to my family who doesn’t know any ASL. As much as I enjoy seeing my family again, I wasn’t quite ready to come home.