Sunday, February 18, 2018

Def Meets Deaf Poetry Jam (9th year)

This is the 9th year of the poetry event titled Def Meets Deaf Poetry Jam taking place at Lovin' Cup in Rochester, NY (Henrietta area near RIT/NTID campus). John Roche, former Liberal Arts faculty at Rochester Institute of Technology, and myself will lead this event. John is responsible for recruiting the hearing poets/performers and I'm responsible for recruiting the deaf/hard of hearing poets/performers. This event shows the two worlds performing along each other: the hearing culture and the deaf culture. English spoken words would be spoken by the hearing people and American Sign Language (ASL) would be used by deaf/hard of hearing people on the stage. Those performers will take turns to do their readings or skits. This unique event has been going on for 9 years. This show gets jammed with a big crowd as popular. Two interpreters will help along to translate the hearing performers' English poems into ASL and the deaf/hard of hearing performers' ASL into English - making this become total accessible for everyone. The 2 interpreters will be Cindy Gilchrist and Denise Herrera. 


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Besides being the MC, I and John will do the performances. The deaf/hard of hearing performers are Matt Schwarz and his high school students RH Sign Language Chorus, Vicki Nordquist, Eric Epstein, and Dangerous Signs. The hearing performers will be Grace Flores, Miriam Lerner, Bart White, Michael Czarnecki, Nick Eckerson, Collen Powderly, and Mental Graffitti.

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