Interpreter helps tell story of modern miscommunication
As actors rehearsed the new Victory Gardens play "Love Person," one line tripped them up.
"While I did nothing" was translated for a deaf character as "and I was innocent."
As rehearsal interpreter, Patty Lahey realized the translation was distorted.
A half-hour discussion of semantics and sign language ensued until the cast got the words and inflection just right. It was a typical day at the office for Lahey, of Wheeling, who translates the spoken word into signs for deaf star Liz Tannebaum.
The play, a Pulitzer-nominated phenomenon in regional theater, is a modern Cyrano de Bergerac romance involving a deaf woman in a lesbian relationship, a Sanskrit professor and miscommunication between the deaf and hearing worlds.
Told in English, Sanskrit, American Sign Language and projected texts and e-mails, the story is equally accessible to hearing and deaf audiences.
Lahey works backstage, helping Tannebaum to know her verbal cues and to be aware of any sudden changes in the script or stage.
The play combines Lahey's interests as a member of a theatrical family, and as someone who grew up with a deaf neighbor and a best friend whose parents were deaf.
After getting a degree in theater, Lahey learned sign language at Harper College in Palatine, and later became artistic and managing director of the International Center on Deafness & the Arts in Northbrook, which produces plays by the deaf.
She also wrote a play for deaf children, "Anything is Possible," featuring a deaf Dalmatian named Spotakiss, who has one spot in the shape of a kiss - a visual translation of a hearing play on words.
She's also signed for Steppenwolf Theatre Company and was managing director for the fledgling theater department at the University of Chicago.
But she's never worked on a play quite like this.
"It's a love story but in several layers," she said. "It's also about the different levels of how we communicate, and how when we translate there's something always lost. And it's kind of about American Sign Language and Sanskrit falling in love too - these two very beautiful, rich languages struggling to be heard in an English-speaking world."