An actor learns about being deaf

Miranda, an effervescent 24-year-old who never seems to sit still, is optimistic.

“We fight like cat and dog but we get on very well, really. I’m looking forward to working together a lot.”

The pair are appearing in Circa’s production of Children of a Lesser God, a play dealing with the relationship between a young deaf woman, Sarah, and her speech therapist with whom she is in love.

Miranda is Sarah, a role she played last year in the Fortune Theatre’s production in Dunedin. Except for two small roles, the rest of the cast from the show is the same as it was in Dunedin. Kate’s role is one of the exceptions.

Playing Sarah has involved a lot more than the usual preparation a stage role demands, because all her communication is by sign language. She doesn’t utter a single word.

“We tried to use a deaf woman in the play but the logistics made it impossible,” Miranda says. “It would have taken too long to train a deaf person into the acting role. It was easier for me to learn about being deaf.

“A deaf person would have had to devote maybe six months or more to the role, and we only had a very short run in Dunedin. They would have had to give up everything and devote themselves entirely to the play.”

Miranda knew little about deafness when she began preparing for the role, but was determined to do it justice. She spent eight months mastering the Australasian Total Communication method of signing, the most popular method in New Zealand for the past eight years since lip reading fell from favour.

“I’ve become increasingly fascinated the more I’ve become involved,” Miranda says.

Learning signing and talking to deaf people also gave her a better understanding of her role in the play.

“When I first read the play I thought Sarah was a stroppy bitch, really ungiving…but now I understand more about being deaf it’s all a lot more logical.

“The play makes sense now, whereas to begin with a lot of things in it seemed quite out of kilter; I couldn’t understand how they worked.”

“Acting without speaking is a strange but very challenging experience, she says.

“I have to freeze off my ears and break the link between my ears and my brain and concentrate on the other methods of communication.

“When I come off stage afterward people get annoyed because I don’t listen to them when they talk to me; I’m turned off.”

The audience doesn’t have to understand her signing to appreciate the play, however. Everything she signs is spoken by other characters.

Since the play’s Dunedin season finished in November last year Miranda has been busy – doing radio recording work in Wellington, television work in Dunedin and participating in drama workshops for deaf children in Auckland. She talks enthusiastically about the workshops and the interest and imagination of the younger participants. Their attentiveness, the way they concentrated on every detail and were so determined to ensure they got everything just right, amazed her.

“It’s very important to me that after receiving so much input from the deaf community, I repay it by teaching the kids, and things like that.”

Miranda is looking forward to playing the role of Sarah again and says because of the time away from the role Wellington audiences will be seeing a different Sarah to the one she presented in Dunedin.

“You just don’t have time for objectivity about your performance when you’re constantly involved in it. Now I’ve had time out…this time Sarah will be growing up, getting older, she is going to be less of an adolescent.”

Miranda is a frequent visitor to Wellington — she started in Katz, A Working Girl last year — but is very much at home in Dunedin.

“I went straight to Dunedin out of drama school and I’ve had lots of good breaks that have helped me there.”

When she chose to be an actor, few people could have been surprised. As well as her mother being in the business, her father, Peter Harcourt, is also a well-known face on the stage and television screen, and a well-known voice on radio.

Home for Kate and Peter is a comfortable old house in central Wellington with a magnificent view and a garden well on the way to deserving the same description. Kate describes herself as a born-again gardener, and when she’s not acting or involved in the theatre world she is outside tending to her plants, determined not to be beaten by Wellington’s wind.

Most of her work is in radio these days, though she frequently appears in small television roles, “the blink and you miss me bits” as she describes them.

She is grateful that her role in Children Of A Lesser God is only small – she is determined to get the little signing she has to perform mastered to perfection.

Miranda is her coach, and they have been able to work well together on that. They are both hoping the friendly spirit of co-operation will survive the play’s two-week long season. No doubt Peter Harcourt has his fingers crossed as well.