Ian Waller enjoys a thoughtful and creative piece of theatre that challenges our own perception of the labels we give to others
It’s time to follow a story to a new world, well, a new world at least for a lot of us. What’s it like to be deaf – and black – and half white and half black – and a woman – and into hip-hop? A world where you want to hide your scars and not stand out just for the way you talk, and you just wish that maybe, sometimes other people could make the same effort that they always ask of you.
This is the world of Chris. Chris is deaf and Chris is black, and Chris loves to dance to the hip-hop that infuses his soul. Then one day, Chris meets Raffie, mixed race, also deaf and also into hip-hop, and there’s a link, a bond between them, but not without definitions.
This is part of the story behind Follow The Signs that follows Chris’s life from the little boy who contracts meningitis at just two, a cruel illness that takes away his hearing in a world that already judges him because of the colour of his skin, and his desire to seek a place where he can enjoy himself and fit in.
It’s a wonderfully innovative, entertaining and thoughtful piece that uses rap, British Sign Language (BSL), captions and spoken world to make it open and accessible to deaf and hearing audiences, while also cleverly opening up the doors on that new world, as well as new ways of looking at it.
When Chris meets Raffie, he has someone to share his love of hip-hop and dance from a shared prospective and with an equal passion. But when the day comes that Chris’s discomfort with his identity is challenged by the simple act of being told to take off his baseball cap, it ignites a repressed feeling of unfairness and inequality that challenges the friendship.
This is a wonderfully conceived and acted piece of theatre, with writer and choreographer Chris Fonseca outstanding in the lead role, retelling his own life while also challenging the audience to question labels that we give to others and being asked to question their own reactions and responses to deafness.
The BSL conversations between Chris and Raffie (Raphaella Julien) are shared with the hearing audience both through Fleur Angevine Rooth and Harry Jardine voicing the BSL on stage, alongside the use of captions beamed onto the theatre’s back wall. This is such a clever way of making the non BSL speakers in the audience visitors into a world where they’re not comfortable without guides to help them… perhaps even a world where they could do with putting in a little more effort to knock down a barrier or two…
Backed up by fantastic performances across the cast, this is a production that is definitely to be recommended.
Follow The Signs plays at Tobacco Factory Theatre until 7 September. For more information and to book tickets, go to https://tobaccofactorytheatres.com/shows/follow-the-signs/