Five people walked out of Resolve within the first ten minutes the night I was there. Perhaps they couldn’t handle the noise and how hard it was to hear what was being said. If so they missed one of the points of the play, to give those with hearing an inkling of what it is like to live in a world where communication can’t be achieved through sound.

In this second play from Odd Socks, a mix of hearing and deaf actors have collaborated with musician Murray Hickman and sound designer Thomas Press to create a soundscape that vibrates the theatre (those without a hearing impairment have to wear ear plugs to cope with the noise).

We are given balloons through which we can feel those vibrations even more keenly. The series of vignettes that make up resolve also seek to share the frustrations of communicating with people who rely on speech. 

In one scene, the hearing mother of a deaf daughter steadfastly refuses to learn how to sign, and doesn’t want her daughter hanging out with other deaf children in the belief it will somehow hold her back. In another, a courtship takes place on a train without a word ever being spoken.

Nicola Clements’ direction is deftly done and her actors (whose names I would have given you had there been a programme available) work well, quickly establishing their characters and doing so without the need for acres of dialogue. 

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There may be others but Miranda Harcourt is the only person I can think of who has done theatrical work with the deaf in this country. Now Wellington’s Odd Socks Productions has come up with a show that does not use language at all (well, there’s a tiny bit) and it is aimed at both deaf and hearing audiences.

Before entering Bats to see Resolve the producers ask one to blow up a balloon and place ear plugs in one’s ears. A lollipop is also provided in the bag of goodies. The balloon is for picking up the vibrations created on stage during the hour-long show. You’ll need the ear plugs as this is a rock concert-loud show with rarely a moment of quiet.

We are invited through a series of connected scenes (a night at the movies, travelling on a bus, playing video games, a mother-daughter argument and so on) to experience the difficulties and the emotional upsets that the deaf must cope with every day. On a bus a young man and a young woman make eye contact each trip but they make no further contact.

It was never made clear – to me at any rate – why. Were they both deaf, or was it just a fleeting attraction and one of them was afraid to pursue the other? The deaf in the audience would no doubt have picked up the nuances.

Two scenes stand out: both involvesome dramatic rhythm playing and some riveting vibrations. A teacher shows a pupil how to play drums and is soon overtaken by her skillful pupil, and later when a sullen teenager raps out a beat with her knife on a table, and a man throws beads into a glass bowl and a young woman stomps out a rhythmical counterpoint on the floor, all to annoy an older person nearby.

Lorena Hayward, Melissa Sutton, Ben Webb, Jared Flitcroft, Saran Goldie-Anderson and Nadia Austin are the three deaf and three hearing performers (some of whom can’t speak NZSL), and they are supported by Thomas Press and Murray Hickman’s emphatic and occasionally subtle sound design and by Rachel Marlow’s lighting.

Nicola Clements simple, unfussy production of Resolve coincides with Deaf Awareness Week, which is in the last week in September. 
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Visually we are greeted with a wall of balloons, lit to intrigue by Rachel Marlow. Aurally we are assaulted with a wall of sound, courtesy Thomas Press and Murray Hickman. Ear plugs are supplied and recommended, not so much for health reasons (as I experience it, the noise is pitched to be undamaging) but to encourage our use of other senses as we experience the show.

As with Odd Socks Productions’ Words Apart last year, also directed by Nicola Clements, Resolve aims to share the hearing-impaired experience, both to ‘hold the mirror up’ for the Deaf community and to expand the perceptions and understandings of the hearing community. But this time the spoken word is minimal.

The opening sequence finds a hearing Mother (Lorena Hayward) obstructing the desire of her deaf daughter (Nadia Austin) to go to Deaf Club because she considers deaf people to be a bad influence, accommodating her ‘disability’ rather than challenging her to cope – and most importantly be employable – in the ‘normal’ world.

It’s exactly the same fear-of-difference and ignorance-based intolerance that makes people rail against foreigners who congregate in enclaves to speak their own language and maintain their own culture. And this is about as naturalistic as the show gets.

A simple movement sequence displays the limits of both visual and verbal language. A recurring scene of commuters on noisy public transport progressively depicts, through eye-contact and body-language, the growing attraction between a young hearing woman (Saran Goldie-Anderson) and a young deaf man (Jared Flitcroft).

Balloons in various stages of inflation are used to suggest cellphones, play-station controllers and bottles of beer as the typical lives of three flatmates – Ben Webb, Melissa Sutton and Flitcroft – are shown to be as rich and complex as ever in the absence of spoken language. Is she with one but more attracted to the other? Are the boys really getting angry with each other or is the virtual violence just their way of showing love for each other?

The influence of Strike’s artistic director Murray Hickman is apparent in a card game sequence on a miked table and in an ensemble piece involving brooms, plastic beads which are percussive when thrown into a bowl, and stamping feet. This is as notable for the visual rhythms as for the sonic ones.  When a drummer (Sutton) patiently teaches a deaf man (Flitcroft), he takes a whole new approach to the art, given it’s something he feels and sees rather than hears.

There is a scene that explores the different ways hearing and deaf people experience the movies and a solo scene (Sutton) that communicates the state waiting for something that – someone who? – doesn’t happen. I think this may be the (un)resolved ending to the flatmates scenario.

The public transport sequence resolves more positively but leaves us to contemplate what may or may not happen next, when she discovers he’s deaf: a ‘what would you do?’ conclusion. (It could be seen as a prequel to Words Apart.

In the final scene the mother of the first scene meets her daughter’s Deaf Club friends and discovers they are not so different after all although it certainly enriches her daughter’s life – and potentially her own? – for them to interact within their own culture: a clearly positive resolution.  

Just short of an hour, Resolve sends us out into the world perceiving it in a different way: a good result, given this is Deaf Awareness Week – or hadn’t you heard?
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