Deaf Broadway’s WAITRESS in ASL and More Set for Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City

The American Modern Opera Company will make their Lincoln Center debut with their Run AMOC* Festival, featuring 12 productions, plus much more.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts will present the fourth annual Summer for the City. The festival has served more than 1 million visitors since launching in 2022.

The 2025 festival offers a lineup of multidisciplinary performances across the Lincoln Center campus, including world and New York premieres, participatory events, and more—all within transformed outdoor spaces that are destinations for a range of artistic experiences and spaces for respite for New Yorkers during the summer months.

Summer for the City 2025 Highlights include:

The American Modern Opera Company makes their long-awaited Lincoln Center debut with their largest and most ambitious Run AMOC* Festival, featuring 12 productions, 10 of which are New York premieres, creating an immersive landscape of art across opera, dance, and music. Highlights include:

The NY premiere of The Comet/Poppea fusing Claudio Monteverdi with George Lewis’s new score and starring Davóne Tines and Anthony Roth Costanzo, set design by Mimi Lien and director Yuval Sharon in his Lincoln Center debut (Jun 19-21);
The NY premiere of Harawi, starring Julia Bullock, Conor Hanick, and Bobbi Jene Smith, directed by Zack Winokur (Jun 26);
A weekend-long celebration of Julius Eastman curated by Seth Parker Woods, featuring Davóne Tines Conor Hanick, and more (Jun 28-29);
The NY premiere and first fully staged performance of Music for New Bodies by composer

Click here to continue reading.

Deaf West Theatre and Two River Theater Co-Producing Elephant Shoes Musical World Premiere | Playbill

The Tony Award-winning Deaf West Theatre and New Jersey’s Two River Theater will co-produce the world premiere of the new, original musical Elephant Shoes next year.

Performed in American Sign Language and spoken English, Elephant Shoes will play Two River June 4–28, 2026, as part of its 2025–2026 season. Tony nominee Jeff Calhoun (Newsies, Grease, Big River) will direct and choreograph.

With a book by Ivan Menchell and music and lyrics by Caroline Kay, this modern-day Cyrano tale follows Cy, who is on the verge of revolutionizing communication with a new invention that translates spoken English into ASL and vice versa. But his breakthrough means nothing if he can’t connect with Roxy, a whip-smart coder. As they work side by side, Cy finds himself falling in love, only to watch his best friend, Chris, sweep Roxy off her feet.

Casting and additional creative team members will be announced at a later date.

Deaf West Artistic Director DJ Kurs said in a statement, “Elephant Shoes is a moving and resonant story about the complexities—and beauty—of communication between Deaf and hearing people. What excites me most is that this new musical has been conceived by Ivan and Caroline from the very beginning as a piece with Deaf characters. I’m especially grateful to be collaborating once again with Jeff Calhoun, whose work on the Broadway revival of Big River with Deaf West over two decades ago was a milestone. And we’re thrilled to be expanding Deaf West’s footprint nationally through this meaningful partnership with Two River Theater in New Jersey.”

Click here to continue reading.

Reunion: How ‘deaf rage’ and 70s thrillers inspired William Mager’s drama | BBC

“Every day, as a deaf person, you’re reminded of your deafness,” says William Mager, writer of new BBC thriller Reunion.

These reminders can range from having to face medical appointments with no available interpreter to being excluded from important decisions about your own life, he says.

“All those things add up over time and generate a sense of injustice,” Mager says, adding that artist Christine Sun Kim describes this feeling as “deaf rage”.

Click here to continue reading.

Award-winning Catalan production ‘Deaf’ arrives in cinemas | Catalan News

The Catalan production ‘Deaf’ (‘Sorda’), directed by Eva Libertad, hits cinemas on Friday, having won awards at the Berlin and Malaga film festivals.

The film is the first Spanish feature film to star a deaf actor in the lead role, Miriam Garlo, and explores the challenges a couple faces when navigating parenthood, with one partner being deaf and the other hearing.

The film centers on Ángela, a deaf woman, who is to have a baby girl with Héctor, her hearing partner.

The pregnancy brings to light her fears about motherhood and about how she will be able to communicate with her daughter. The arrival of the baby will alter the couple’s relationship and lead Ángela to face parenting in a world that is not made for her.

According to the director, the film was born from a desire to explore the connection between the hearing world and the deaf community through the lens of a couple.

Click here to continue reading.

No Ordinary Hero: The SuperDeafy Movie | dcmp.org

SuperDeafy, a deaf actor who plays a superhero, must reveal the man behind the cape to find true love and inspire eight-year-old Jacob, a young deaf boy, to believe in himself. The movie follows the evolution of this unique hero. A beloved character and role model, SuperDeafy has a worldwide following.

Click here to watch the video preview and continue reading.

Roger Daltrey of The Who says he’s going deaf and blind | USA TODAY

Roger Daltrey says aging isn’t all rock ‘n’ roll.

The singer behind The Who’s legendary sound opened up at a recent concert about losing his sight and hearing.

“The joys of getting old mean you go deaf,” Daltrey said at a concert in the U.K. on Thursday per Sky News. “I also now have got the joy of going blind.”

“Fortunately I still have my voice,” the 81-year-old rocker told the crowd at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

“Then I’ll have a full Tommy,” he added, in reference to Tommy Walker, the fictional titular character from The Who’s 1968 rock opera “Tommy,” who is blind, deaf and mute.

USA TODAY has reached out to representatives for Daltrey for comment.

Click here to watch the video and continue reading.

‘The Last of Us’ season 2 will be available in American Sign Language | Northeastern Global News

When “The Last of Us,” HBO’s critically acclaimed post-apocalyptic drama, returns for its second season on April 13 it will be available in American Sign Language, a first for a major TV show.

Viewers will be able to choose to watch the video game adaptation with professional deaf performers Daniel Durant and accessibility advocate Leila Hanaumi signing on screen. As of March 31, viewers will also be able to watch the first season of “The Last of Us” in ASL as well.

The show joins recent movie releases on the Max streaming platform that include support for ASL: “Barbie,” “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” and “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.”

For those who don’t use ASL, it might seem trivial, but for Rachel Berman-Kobylarz, an ASL instructor and associate academic instructor at Northeastern University, it’s a landmark moment in the world of TV. Increasing the visibility of deaf people, both in front of the camera and as interpreters, is invaluable for a community that has not always had on-screen role models.

But the inclusion of ASL also cuts to the core of conversations around acceptance, language and identity that have been taking place in the deaf community for decades.

Click here to continue reading.

New documentary highlights Gallaudet’s role in the fight for the Americans with Disabilities Act | Gallaudet University

As a key player in the history of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Gallaudet’s campus was a natural choice for previewing a new documentary about the story behind the law. A screening of “Change, Not Charity: the Americans with Disabilities Act,” produced by the PBS series “American Experience,” was hosted by the Schuchman Deaf Documentary Center (SDDC) and the Center for Democracy in Deaf America (CDDA) on March 12. The event included a Q&A with writer/producer Chana Gazit, American Experience executive producer Cameo George, and director Jim LeBrect.

Dr. Brian Greenwald, ’96, Director of the SDDC, was pleased to see a full house in attendance. “It’s crucial to understand our history and how we arrived here because too often, people take progress for granted—and we can’t afford to do that,” he says. “This is a valuable opportunity for the Gallaudet community to come together and recognize that the path to the ADA was anything but easy.”

The day of the screening, March 12, coincided with the anniversaries of two central events that contributed to the passage of the ADA — and are featured in the film. It was the 35th anniversary of the Capitol Crawl, in which disabled protesters pulled themselves up the inaccessible 83 steps of the Capitol building. And, 37 years ago, it was the 7th day of Deaf President Now (DPN).

Click here to continue reading.

Click here to learn more on Apple TV+ Press.

‘The Last of Us’ Gets ASL Edition on Max from ‘CODA’ Star Daniel Durant Ahead of Season 2 | IndieWire

The “clickers” in the “The Last of Us” are zombies whose fungus has grown so infected, it has both blinded them and made their hearing hyper-sensitive. In the video game on which the hit HBO television series is based, players use stealth to evade them and respond to the sound of the monsters’ clicks in order to survive.

For Deaf players, developer Naughty Dog’s game is top of the line in terms of accessibility, implementing subtle visual cues to make players aware of looming danger, putting those players on equal footing with hearing players. It’s only fitting then that the series adaptation of “The Last of Us” be as inclusive for Deaf viewers as the game is.

HBO is set to launch an ASL version of both the first season of its hit series “The Last of Us” and the upcoming second season, IndieWire can reveal exclusively. Daniel Durant, one of the stars of the Oscar-winning “CODA,” is the ASL performer for the first season of the show, acting through the entire season in American Sign Language to open up a new level of appreciation and comprehension of the series for the Deaf audience.

The series will be available as a standalone title on Max, and it drops on March 31 ahead of the premiere of Season 2 on April 13. The ASL version of Season 2 will air day-and-date when it becomes available for everyone else, and Durant and director Leila Hanaumi will be the performers for Season 2.

“We always rely on captions, but they’re always in English grammar structure, and having the concept of adding a Deaf interpreter there just makes it a clearer message,” Durant told IndieWire via an interpreter. “It gives us expanded ideas and meanings, and then we as Deaf people get to understand the meanings behind it, using our own language and seeing it on the screen. It makes it even more accessible to us and so much more special.”

Click here to continue reading.

Oscars to Recognize And Honor Captioning Technology | The Daily Moth – YouTube

Marlee Matlin, during an interview with ABC on the red carpet of the Academy Awards (Oscars) on Sunday night, announced that the Academy would award an Oscar for all closed captioning technology in an “Academy Award of Merit.”