'Seeing' Drama through Deaf Culture Exploration whether theatre and drama participation has relevance for the Deaf community.

Abstract

This dissertation examines theatre and drama participation in the Deaf community. Historical research proves that theatre has been a part of cultural engagement of the Deaf community for hundreds of years, and the previous research conducted on deaf drama participation agrees with the fact that Deaf drama has a keen interest in it. To explore this further, a practical workshop process with deaf participants was organised to observe and gain more knowledge of deaf students' understanding of drama conventions, and interviews were agreed with a member of the Scottish Deaf community to investigate the Deaf theatre. Along with the practical study, the theoretical research was looking for key information from Deaf histories and culture in Finland, the UK and the USA. The study results gave valuable information on social values of theatre in the Deaf community as well as underlining the need for drama facilitation for Deaf in education. The data also showed that Sign Language has a connection to why Deaf enjoy performing. The researcher wanted the Deaf community to talk for themselves, and hopes to encourage more academic research to take place about Deaf theatre and arts. Especially in Scotland as a new performance degree for Deaf at the RCS will strengthen professionalism of Deaf theatre in the UK. Disclaimer Following the example set by previous academic publications (Ladd etc.), this research will be using the same direction with use of 'd' and 'D' in the word 'deaf'. In reference to people with a hearing loss in medical terms or identifying all people with some form of hearing loss, the word 'deaf' will be spelled with 'd'. In contrary, the minority who define themselves culturally and linguistically as part of a Deaf community, the reference 'Deaf' will be used.