November 25, 2015
The SuburbanBy Walter J. Lyng
November 25, 2015
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The Segal Centre is moving on with its 2015/16 season with its next production; Nina Raine’s Tribes. The play will open on Thursday, Dec. 3 and run until Dec. 20. The plot centres on Billy, the only deaf member of an eccentric, intellectual family. The Suburban recently spoke with actor Greg Ellwand who plays Billy’s father. Throughout rehearsals, Ellwand got to know lead actor Jack Volpe, who himself is deaf.
“Appallingly, I had never met a deaf person before,” says Ellwand. “It’s an extraordinary experience to be in his presence and to become aware of how difficult it is to not have that sense available to you.”
Ellwand offers further details on the plot of Tribes, which adds more context to Billy’s upbringing.
“It’s about a family who has raised a deaf child and the problems they have navigating that difficulty,” he says. “They haven’t raised him to learn sign language. All they’ve done is try to teach him lip reading. They feel that putting him into a sign language world would be putting him into a minority situation.”
When a romance with a woman who teaches Billy sign language opens him up to a new world of self-expression, he discovers that instead of trying to fit into his family’s world, he can find his own.
In observing Volpe, Ellwand noticed that he didn’t really think of his condition as a hindrance. “He really feels like it’s part of his culture, world and personality. He wouldn’t have it any other way.”
The experience has so far introduced Ellwand to a world he previously new little about.
“It’s made me quite curious about American Sign Language,” he says. “It’s a very pretty dance of the hands and it’s extremely expressive. You use your whole body and your face. Watching people communicate like that is just beautiful.”
And while the play obviously deals heavily with hearing impairment and sign language, Ellwand maintains that most people will find something to identify with in Tribes.
“It’s not just a sign language play,” he says. “There are themes running through it that would be of interest to people. Some of the themes could be about exclusionary cultures. Humans always seem to need to find their tribe, and the elemental tribe is the family. From the outside, a family’s rituals can seem very strange but within the family, they don’t necessarily.”
For more information and tickets, visit www.segalcentre.org