You are an actress and dancer… When did you decide to train as a sign language interpreter and interpreter guide for people with deaf-blindness and why?
Sign language always caught my attention, I was fascinated. As a child I was very shy, I spoke very little and I saw deaf people, and I said, wow, this is the ideal system to communicate in the distance, very attractive and very pleasant. I started with theater when I was very young, and there was a time when I was looking for real communication, and I thought that deaf people communicate in a truer way because the body has more meaning than words. I signed up for a very basic course at the age of 15 and then, in that search for truth in communication.
Do you mean that the body is capable of communicating more than words?
Flora Davis used to say that only 35% of a conversation is verbal, the rest is non-verbal communication, we just don’t stick to all the information the body gives us.
Where was your training?
In the association of Puerto de Santa María, in Cádiz. One day in the Association, they called from the City Hall, they needed someone and I did it. I found it very satisfying, and then I did the higher cycle. I entered knowing sign language and that made me have a lot of ease. I studied dance, which gives me another flexibility, the whole study of corporal expression and more ease when it comes to expressing myself corporally. Sign language has a corporal component that is obviously expressive. So, little by little I was combining the performing arts with sign language. Sign language is a dance, it is something very beautiful. I am also interested in sign language as a scenic language.
You have commented on other occasions that you like to make sign language art….
At another time, together with Raquel Camacho, I put together “Cada átomo de mi cuerpo” which is a biblioscope about Hellen Keller, the first deafblind woman to obtain university studies and the first to make this group of deafblind people visible.
Thanks to the story of Hellen Keller, who spread the word that deafblind people can learn to speak, to study and to develop as independent people.
There I was doing the choreographic creation of communication systems. I like to adapt it to art, so that it does not remain only in the static component of the performer. As I am an actress, my creative head goes elsewhere. If the word “idea” has to be said, why not dance it, and make you vibrate through what an impulse of the fingers gives you and the beauty of hands in space.
You recently participated as a sign language interpreter in the play about the war, “Humanidad” at the Teatro Circo Price. How was this experience and the preparation process?
In this case, for me it has been very satisfying to use sign language not only as an interpreter, because just as we see works where there are interpreters who speak English and German, why not sign language, which in itself is already a dance. I was offered the character of Goya’s mirror and it was very satisfying to be able to do spoken text and sign language. Since it is such a poetic text, it has been a challenge to interpret that language, the vision of war and so on, trying to maintain the meaning given by the author, who in this case was María Folguera.
Then, that abstraction of the later deafness that Goya had, I thought it was very beautiful to show that symbolic element, something that happened in the future, but to pour it out. I prepared it based a lot on the text and trying to respect as much as possible so that the poetics of the work would not be deformed.
Was the intention from the beginning to incorporate accessibility in this project?
María Folguera’s proposal was to have an interpreter and for it to be accessible with subtitles and audio description. They wanted a regular interpreter and there are many people who say that she is misleading. Most deaf people work more with their sense of sight, because that’s where the world comes in, so they have a faster and wider field of vision. The director, Raquel Camacho, decided to incorporate me as an actress and interpreter.
What do you think are the main myths surrounding sign language in Spain?
To begin with, few people call it sign language, many people say sign language. People talk about “deaf and dumb”, which is very demeaning. Some people don’t understand that there is no universal sign language, which is obvious.
Do these myths extrapolate to the cultural sector when evaluating whether a work has sign language interpretation?
The resounding no at the beginning is usually due to the belief that it is a distorting element, because they consider that it can interfere with the staging. The beautiful thing would be to include it. Not all people have a good reading level; there is a high rate of functional illiteracy. It is also necessary to understand how heterogeneous the deaf community is and there is a general lack of knowledge about it.
How do you see the future of cultural accessibility in Spain, specifically for the hearing impaired? What do you see as the main challenges?
At the very least, the plays should be subtitled. Because currently there are very few works with subtitles, so there is no freedom of choice, a deaf person has no freedom of choice when it comes to choosing accessible performances. There are also many people who lose their hearing, not only deaf and hard of hearing people. At least, in the main national and public theaters, they should be accessible every day, because a deaf person has the same right as me and you to go to the theater whenever he/she wants.
Who are your references in terms of companies that integrate sign language, interpreters or countries that are more developed in the field of cultural accessibility?
In France, deaf art and culture festivals began to take place. I participated in the World Cup we did in Rome with a flamenco choreography with deaf dancers. I played the sound of the guitar and they danced through the vibrations, so I taught them the structure of flamenco. In Spain there are also film and humor festivals aimed at the deaf community. However, everything is by and for deaf people, rarely the hearing public attends as part of the culture, as we can go to a concert of classical music or a theater in verse. As references, I have consulted throughout my life Emmanuelle Laborit, a French actress who was one of the first deaf actresses we saw in cinema. I have colleagues who are poets in sign language, Miguel Angel San Pedro, was one of the first deaf people who graduated in Hispanic philology. He did his thesis on sign language poetry. As for works, there is “Calígula murió. yo no”, “Tribus”, “Cáscaras vacías”, I am interested in the fact that sign language can have a place as a scenic language.
What are your next projects?
Now I will start a project at the Academia de Cine, of a character who signs, and who listens but doesn’t want to speak. I also have my personal project that has to do with all the languages that haunt my head. How I see the world of the hands, from the most personal point of view and that’s what I’m writing about. I direct and interpret.
