NTID Theatre History: Fences: April 2019

The NTID Performing Arts production of August Wilson’s Fences garnered several accolades from The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF). Directed by Luane Davis Haggerty, with Christopher Colesserving as Assistant Director and Cultural Consultant, the production received recognition for Excellence in Ensemble Work and Excellence in Stage Management, the latter awarded to Teriana Mewborn, a former applied liberal arts student. Additionally, former students Marquawn Holmes and Cortez Harris were nominated for The Irene Ryan Acting Award, with Tonique Hunter as the alternate. Mr. Coles’s dedication and exceptional talent played a vital role in fostering cohesion among the cast and crew.

In this production, as with all RIT/NTID Performing Arts shows, deaf actors used American Sign Language and hearing actors used spoken English to present the story. The drama took place in 1950s Philadelphia and featured Troy Maxson, a former star of the Negro baseball leagues then working as a garbage man. As a black man, Maxson had been excluded from the major leagues during his prime, and his bitterness took a toll on his relationships with his wife and son, who then wanted his own chance to play ball.

“This production of Fences was particularly exciting,” said Luane Davis Haggerty, NTID senior lecturer and director of the play. “There was a very strong cast of actors. And we had a team of professional designers with national credentials who worked on the sets, costumes, lighting, sound, and props that were custom-made for the actors.”

Davis-Haggerty went on to explain what it took to produce a show that was fully accessible. “In developing this unique production, one equally accessible to deaf and hearing people, there were many factors to consider,” she added. “For example, there were challenges to developing costumes and scenery that provided a clear background for sign language to be understood, finding creative ways to represent offstage dialog and/or sound effects visually, staging so that both the audience and the actors could see each other at all times, cueing actors who could not see the action on stage, and incorporating voice actors. But all of these together made this type of theater so exciting and visually appealing.”