Full Circle

Although Nathan has not had a lot of ASL interpreting jobs lately due to a change in laws concerning what level of certification is required to be hired, he has been working with the Utah Festival Opera this summer to provide interpreting for several shows. A few months ago, he interpreted for a children’s production based on the extremely popular Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willams. He had a ball doing that one and absolutely loved seeing little faces light up when Deaf children were able to experience live theater for the first time.

Over the past several months, he has been preparing to interpret for a production of the high school version of Les Misérables. He works with a team of interpreters, and they have been practicing and planning for quite a while. One member of the team is an official interpreter employed by the Disney company and Nathan thought it was pretty neat to be able to work with an obviously highly skilled and experienced interpreter. He took advantage of the opportunity to ask questions and get some insights into being a professional interpreter.

One of the things that Les Mis has that Elephant and Piggie does not is a good smattering of cuss words and quite a bit of inuendo. Interpreting is all about conveying the ideas and words given and editing or changing words is not the name of the game, so Nathan has actually had some conundrums about how to interpret some of those things that are not taught in the classroom. But he knew he needed to be able to appropriately interpret whatever a client might throw his way. To that end, he recently went to a weekend workshop about swearing in ASL and let me tell you, he learned some extremely colorful new signs. I think he told me the included vocab list was seventeen pages, and included multiple words and phrases he had never been exposed to before, either in sign or spoken English. LAUGHING WITH TEARS SMILEY And even those this production was the slightly tamed high school version, he still had plenty of opportunities to use his newly gained knowledge!

One of the things Nathan loves about this type of performance interpreting is seeing the reactions of those for whom he is interpreting. One of his highlights for this show was seeing one Deaf audience member moved to tears by the action onstage and the accompanying interpreting gave them everything they needed to be emotionally engaged in the story. Another of his highlights was meeting Millicent Simmonds, a Deaf actress who starred in the movie “A Quiet Place.” Apparently, she lives in the area, and Nathan was a little bit starstruck. He wanted to ask for a selfie with her but thought it would be unprofessional. As such, he opted not to. But he was excited to meet her and to have her tell their interpreting team that they did a great job!

Some of his friends attended the performance today so they could show their support. At some point I’d like to be able to attend one of these performances as well. But as you all well know, our lives are just a little bit busy right now. He really enjoys these theatrical interpreting gigs though, so I suspect there will be more opportunities in the future! 

Nathan told us that interpreting for this particular show was kind of a full circle moment for him. A few years ago, when we all went to see the Broadway Across America production of Les Misérables, we happened to be at one of the performances where ASL interpretation was offered. It was the first time Nathan had been exposed to interpreting for a theatrical production, and he was absolutely mesmerized. He spent equal time watching the stage and watching the interpreters. After the show, he was totally excited about the possibility of combining several of his passions and interpreting for a show. And now, he can say that he has done so!