Hearing Loss LIVE! talks with Michael Conley.
Julia:Hi, folks, welcome to Hearing Loss LIVE! Today is about connections. If you haven't figured it out yet, we're really big on connections and how important they are with the hearing loss world and in connections, Chelle sent us an email about somebody she met, Michael Conley, linked us to his web page. And we read through his web page and his play, and we're like, oh, yeah, he's got to be on our podcast got to be on our podcast. Chelle I'd like you to talk about how you kind of stumbled onto Michael because again, it's about a connection. And I think it's a connection we try to help advertise.
Chelle:Yeah, this is Chelle, I met Michael because I was attending a Toastmaster, Audible Talkers Toastmaster group. I love to support the hard of hearing community in their meetings, and especially if they're accessable, with captions and transcripts and all this great stuff. So I attend that Toastmaster group. And Michael showed up one night. And of course, beside his name it says readinglips.com. And I was"I got to get in touch with him". And because he has his website right there, I can go right to it and contact him from there. So I was really happy to make that connection.
Michael:And readinglips.com, www.readinglips.com, that was a website I created to promote my play Reading Lips. And of course, there are other things on there besides just that play, because I've been writing plays for a long time. But Reading Lips is about a man who is kind of between two cultures. At the beginning of the play he says,"Am I a gay man who happens to be deaf? Or my a deaf man who just happens to be gay?" And when I started writing that play, I thought was gonna be very short. I thought it was going to be like 10, 15 minutes. I didn't know that I had so much to say. And I, um, I didn't know the answer to that question when I started writing. And I had to do a lot of research. And I met with people who were Deaf and gay, I met with people who were Deaf and were raised in schools for the Deaf, who were like the three or the four of us who were raised reading lips, raised in the oral world, and through that I got a real sense of a couple of things. First of all, I learned what a big impact, having a hearing loss had been in my life. I always thought the defining experience of my life was being gay. And you know, you grow up, I'm from a small town in Kansas and grow up, you know, dealing with this, and it's very difficult, and that's what you focus on. But then you get older and you start to think, and especially when I started reading this play, I realized, having a hearing loss has made far more of an impact on the choices I've made in life. It's made a big difference. For example, in fact that I've stayed at jobs a lot longer than my friends. Maybe like some of you, I found a job, I liked the people, I've got challenges, and I said, you know what, I'm just gonna stay here. Because moving to another job involves creating a whole new set of relationships, creating a whole new way of interacting with people. And when I got that, I realized, you know, being hard ofhearing, I like to say a person with hearing loss. Being a person with hearing loss has had far more impact. One of the things that kind of gave me the impetus to even think about writing the play was a conversation I had with my father when I was an adult. When I was growing up, we had a really terrible relationship. And I think everybody has a hard time with their parents. But in my case, it was very, very difficult. And when we were growing up, when I was an adult, I had gone back for the holidays. I was visiting and we're sitting around talking, and all of a sudden he says,"You know, I feel terrible. I owe you an apology. I didn't treat you right when you were growing up." And I don't know, oh my god, here it comes. You know, I'm so sorry. I didn't understand about you being gay and all this stuff. And he said, "You know, I never believed you couldn't hear." And I said, "What?" And he said, "when you walk by me, and didn't answer me, or when you said what, when somebody else talked, it made me so angry." And I thought that was it? I mean, you grow up with all of these feelings about why things didn't work out. And this was the last thing I would have expected. And that got me to thinking about my own experience. And you know, what I was thinking about was some of the things that we were talking about here today, I was thinking, imagine how many people out there, you know, walking around, kids who are dealing with self esteem when they're 12, 10, 12, whatever. And then it turns out their parents, my father, you know, had a master's degree taught high school English later, he was the vice president of his company. He was a very smart person. But for some reason, that made him angry. And it gave me the impetus to kind of evaluate that about myself, which is what led me to start writing the play. So the play is full length. As I said, it started short. And it's, it's been given-- during the course of writing the play, getting it marketed, and then having it produced, it has had what they call staged readings. And this is a thing where you bring people into a theatre, and rehearse it, you know, directors work with the actors and with the author, on the characters, but the performance, the the actors are holding the script. And a staged reading is just one step. And Reading Lips has had several staged readings. And producers say, "yes this is a good play but how are we going to market it?" Because there are a lot of plays --for gay people. And the Deaf audience, you know, what are we going to do for Deaf people? And so you got no audience for this play. And that kind of hard to hear. You know, you've worked on a play, of course, there's an audience for it. And I tried to explain this play is about somebody who's kind of caught on the cusp of two cultures. He's, He's part of the Deaf community. He's part of the gay community. And where does he fit? Where do is a question I asked, as I was writing this, where do I fit in this? And I just haven't been able to get it produced. I have one theater in New York, promised to produce it. And then they had a change at the top. And they withdrew the offer. And, you know, it's hard to not personalize something like that, and you promise something, you know, you should follow through. So it hasn't had a full production. It's had several staged readings. I've gotten good feedback from it, but it hasn't gone to the next level.
Chelle:This is Chelle and I, I have a question that kind of goes with that. And that is that sometimes it can be so hard to get hard of hearing people out to theater. We have Salt Lake Acting Company here who's gone above and beyond to make their plays accessable. And I have tried advertising to the hard of hearing to get'em to come. And I'm not sure if it's just you know, we get used to not being accommodated. So we don't think to go or I just wonder if you have any thoughts on how to mobilize our community a little more and get them active in the
Michael:Well I do think certainly things are better than theater? they were even 10 years ago, I think, you know. Twenty years ago, the only thing that occurred to people is Oh, I know what, we'll get a couple of ASL interpreters, that'll be fine. And like most people in the Deaf community know, not everybody uses ASL. And what I've noticed is that theatres have now put up ways to have captions on screens on other sides of the walls of the stage. And you can follow it just along. I had an interesting experience with Reading Lips because as I said, I know some people are Deaf Community Services, and I have one performance that was interpreted. I got some people who were ASL signers and And we had one performance that was interpreted, and people we're laughing their heads off. And, and so I've had the experience of having a non-hearing audience enjoy what's funny about it or relating to what they see in themselves. And I've had the experience of a hearing company, a hearing audience, go through the same experience. So I think to answer your question, I don't know San Diego is a good town for theater. But it's hard to find theaters that do interpretive performances, captions. I mean, one thing I think we've all encountered is open caption films, you know, theaters do not want to show open caption films, they want to the put that little device on the side of the seat comes up like this. And that's not the same. That's not the same. So at theatres, they're having to break through this. And I did use, I got a cochlear implant of 15 years ago, and I did use those infrared hearing systems. And they did work for me, but they don't work now. And so I go to theaters, I sit in the front row, I do the best I can. When I went to see Angels in America about oh about 20 years ago, I went and I found out that the the theater didn't have captions. So I bought the plays. And I don't know if you know, Angels in America, but are long three act plays, and there are two of them. So I read the plays, and I took notes. And I'm trying to cram for an exam during the intermission, okay, this is what happened at first act. This is what's going to be happening in the second act and trying to-- because you don't know what's going on, you're looking at the production, you're looking at the great actors, you, you hear some snippets of dialogue. But to put that all together is hard without captions.
Michele:I was gonna, that was gonna be one of my questions, I was wondering if your play had open captions. But again, you said you didn't have an open caption performance?
Michael:Well, for it to have an open caption performance, the theater would have to invest a lot of money, and they're not going to invest in a play that is only having a rehearsed reading. If they had, if they agreed to produce it, it would cost nothing to have captions. I mean, once you make that commitment, it'd be very easy to do it. But I can't do that I can't, you know, afford to do captions for play. So I did the best I could by bringing in the ASL interpreters. But again, I had to accept that that would only be useful for a certain percentage of the audience. Having said that, I mean, there were several readings of that particular staging. And I really marketed to the Deaf community. I got the director of Deaf Community Services to come and he brought his friends. And it's funny, I recently remet a woman, I met a woman who I am involved in an ASL group with and the play came up. And she said, "I saw that I didn't know it was you. I saw that. I came that night." It was kind of interesting to hear somebody, you know, 10, 15 years later, repeating what she liked about play. I mean, it's very flattering.
Chelle:Yeah, that's exciting. I know I tried to attend a play many years ago with just lipreading, and you really can't do lipreading at plays I found out. So I think it's cool to you have this play called Reading Lips. I hope you know that it can get up and get out there so that people understand more.
Michael:Yeah, I think one of the things also that I got out of writing play is developing this sense of, of Deaf Pride. Because in doing this research, I learned a lot about the Deaf community that I didn't know and kind of put this into perspective. You know, I went to graduate school I, you know, moved. I mean, I moved to New York to go to college anyway, and then I took this class and, you know, coming to terms with, you know, my father and then its like okay, maybe I should look into this Deaf thing. And so I had to do some research. And one of the things I found about the Deaf community is how embracing it is. I said to one person I was talking to, "so would you consider me a Deaf person?" He said, "Oh, absolutely." And that's one of the things that's so great about the Deaf communities. Really, it's big tent. They want everybody to feel like they're part of it. And so when I was doing the research, I, I remember, back when I was a student, I remember the Deaf President Now movement. And this was at Gallaudet University. They had never had a Deaf president. Only has been hearing president. And they, the students had done their homework, they laid the foundation. And then they announced it's gonna be another hearing person. And these students, these late teen and early 20 student, they got together, and they they shut down the campus. And then they started moving out. They got the postal workers to refuse to deliver the mail. And then they got the media involved. And the university had to break, had to back down completely. They had to say, okay. They fired the board of directors. President, they got rid of the person that they had announced was going to be their new president. They brought in somebody different. And it was all because of these excited young people and saw a different world. And when I was a student at Gallaudet, just for the summer, taking ASL classes, that was the first place I went, I went to the, to the president's office, I went upstairs on the second floor of this building, because I knew that's where it had happened. And I thought, this is history. And, you know, you're talking about theater. I mean, the National Theatre of the Deaf, has been around for over 50 years. How many theatre companies last 50 years? And this company has been out there working full time, and that's a sense of pride. I mean, you know, all of these things are things and the people who came before us, I mean, every culture has people. The African American community has people. The gay community. The Deaf community has people who have really changed, you know, that world. And so that developed a sense of deaf pride for me that I didn't even realize was there.
Chelle:That there's a rallying, rallying cry right now in the disability community called -- where they're saying "nothing about us without us." And and I have to agree with that. If you really want change and acceptance and invitation-- and inviting others to the table, you got to really involve the community that they're involved in and be-- let them be a part of it. Because it is amazing how many times throughout history that people have changed, changed the status quo by nothing without us. Nothing. Without Us. About-- Nothing about us without us.
Michael:And what the people that they need to bring to the to the table are the hearing people or more people who have hearing loss, which?
Chelle:For instance, if it's going to be about hearing loss, they should really involve the hard of hearing community totally just like the Deaf did with the Deaf Now president, you know, if they really want us to have a say, then they need to invite us to the tables.
Michael:That makes that makes perfect sense. I agree with that Chelle. I think things are better than they were. I think there's that gives the opportunity to go even further. It's not that expensive to put up the technology that will make it possible to interpret every play. And in fact, we were talking, Michele, on Saturday about CART. I mean, how hard would it be to put up a giant screen TV and have somebody key in what the actors is saying in real time. So the technology is there. Its just the commitment and you're saying Chelle that maybe Deaf people, maybe people with hearing loss don't go to theater often enough? I'm not sure what the reason is. But the technology is definitely there. So I've written other plays. Yu were asking before we started about the other plays I mean, written, you know, I started off at Columbia as a screenwriting student I wanted to write movies. I wanted to be a big screenwriter. And so one summer I took classes in writing dialogue, I thought that would help me. I took classes in playwriting, I thought, Oh, that'll help. And I fell in love, I absolutely fell in love with playwriting, because it's, it's still economical. You have to depend on the dialogue to convey so much. And so I had to finish my thesis as a screenplay. And I finished that. It was kind of hard, because I was bored by that time, but I was off taking all kinds of playwriting classes. And so based on that, afterwards, I just wrote a lot of shorter plays. And I --people asked me, I replays, you know, comedies or dramas? And I'm always intrigued that people say that. I think reflects the fact that they think of things as just being one or the other. And what I like to say is, I write serious plays that have humor, because I could never write like Eugene O'Neill. I mean, I could never write a big tragedy. I write plays that are about serious things. And I think, for me, what is serious is people trying to make a connection with each other. And that's always true. But I hold up people. There's very famous playwright from the early 20th century, George Kaufman, who wrote about serious things. And he was kind of a personal hero. But for us, a lot of people think of Neil Simon, who wrote plays, who was just telling jokes, in some of his early plays were really just funny. But some of those later ones, like Class is Sweet and especially Lost in Yonkers, those are very serious plays. But they're funny, the audience is just having a great time. So I try to find things that I think will be of interest. If they're of interest to me, I think there'll be of interest to other people. So you know, I've written some plays that we get. I've written plays a wrote to play about social media. Because I think personally, social media is kind of denigrating real life. People who take photographs of dinners and post them while they're eating, I just find that silly. And I wrote a play about Rudolph Finn, who was the artistic director of the Metropolitan Opera back in the 1950s. And he had kind of an interesting life because he was such a powerful man. And then in his later years, he developed Alzheimer's, and his life kind of turned into a joke for the newspapers. And I wanted to write about what what is it when a man has had a career like that? What really endures? And so I brought in Maria Callas, who had had a wonderful career in opera. But she was kind of a joke, because her boyfriend dumped her and married Jacqueline Kennedy. So what did these two people have, that they worked so hard to create culture and art, that enriched other people, and yet at the end of their lives, they're just kind of dismissed. And I wanted to write about what really endures. And I think, in their case, the art is what goes on, that lives on. We don't think, you know, people who are opera fans don't think so much about Jacqueline Kennedy now, but they did back in the 60s. People, fortunately have forgotten Rudolph Finn was a joke, because he had been married and the judges came in and annulled the marriage, what we remember now is great artist he was. So that was something I wanted to focus on that. Right now I'm working on a play that I think will be kind of interesting because I --when I was in New York, I bought standing room all the time. I couldn't afford, nobody can buy tickets. And I used to go to the ballet. I loved the ballet because it's an art form that doesn't involve listening to dialogue, doesn't involve hearing people sing. I love -- I had taken ballet classes myself as a kid. And so I started going to ballet. And the way I could afford was by standing. So go -- there's whole ritual. Go down early in the morning, you get in place in line, you wait until the tickets go on sale, then you go to work, do whatever you're going to do during the day, and then come back and stand for three hours. And that takes a real commitment for somebody to get up early in the morning. I mean, get down there, like seven or eight, wait until the box office open to 10. That's a real commitment. And I did that sometimes several times a week, I just loved it so much. And I met these interesting people. And these people, you know, in some cases, they've come to terms with the fact that this is the closest they're going to get to art to culture. This, this is they're not going to be themselves famous dancers. And some of them have had careers. Some of them are not sure. But bring all these people together. And then fascinating. So the play is just about them waiting to buy the tickets. It's not about the performance, anything else, it's just about them. And I met some wonderful people, and it was a great experience. So that's one I'm working on now.
Julia:I love it. That is going to be a very awesome play, in my opinion. Because you're right, that's where you know, you've got, there's just such a diverse set of people that you're going to meet in that standing section I kind of saw Chelle's eye is kind of go for a question because it around here we don't have that. I knew what you were talking about. Because, okay, I'm I'm a baseball freak. But in San Francisco, they actually have it set up outside the stadium, so people can watch from outside the stadium, the games, and you're supposed to be honerous and share with each other. So those that couldn't quite get a ticket can can enjoy the game as well from outside the stadium. So I love that. And I know New York does that quite a bit with some of their stuff. So
Michael:Yeah, I did most of the standing at the Metropolitan Opera House, which, because they brought in so many different ballet companies. And there was all this juggling about well, what level are you going to stand in, and people wanted to be in the first 20 places because those were the best standing places. And, you know, you would hear people talk about stuff and would think this person had dreams that weren't realized, and they're here now. And so the whole experience and, and, and you get the same people over and over. Because at theater, if somebody goes to stand for Hamilton, that's it, they see the play that it. If they go and stand for something else, but for the ballet, the repertory changes every night. So you see the same people throughout the week. So you develop a friendship, relationship.
Julia:Super exciting. We're gonna run a little long. So I hope everybody will sit through the podcast, my timer has gone off. But I love this story about standing play just got me kinda excited. Any other questions for Michael, from you, young ladies in the audience here?
Chelle:Oh, just really appreciate you being here and talking about it. Because I've learned things. So thank you. Thank you.
Michael:Thank you for inviting me. This is wonderful. I really enjoyed meeting all of you. And just having a chance to think about all of this before we met to talk.
Julia:If you're a small theater, and I'm going to start with small because if you're a large theater, I think you should look into it, too. But if you're a small theater and you're looking to change some things up, I think you really need to go to www.readinglips.com and read through Michael's plays. I loved it. And all I did is read what he had on the website. So I really think this could be a change for inclusion. For a very small theater, a medium sized theater or a large theater. I do know San Diego has a couple of theaters that offers open captions. Vicki Turner who's one of the people we broadcast with before actually goes down there and keeps a board and offers captioning. So we know it's possible and you know, I know a lot of them have ASL night too. So there's three different populations that could really come together and see what I think is just a great I wouldn't call it a drama, and I wouldn't call it a comedy but it really was a thoughtful, you know, who am I and I really get into that stuff. Of course we know that because we like to go to the Salt Lake Acting Company playz. So Hint Hint, Natalie, hint, hint. Love to see it here in Utah. If you're listening and you're enjoying this, we hope you've learned something. We hope you come back. We hope you subscribe, share, like, come to our Talk About It Tuesday, I believe it's going to be in about two weeks. It's the first Tuesday of every month. And we just have an open chat. Sign up for our email list, info@heairnglosslive.com, where you can learn what events are going on. We don't spam your folders, we don't sell your information. It really is just for our twice a month newsletter. And if we have workshops and whether they're free or if there's a charge. If you've got somebody you'd like them to learn more about, either how to incorporate captioning CART, or you have a friend struggling with hearing loss and you don't know where to send them, send them to us. We help you help yourself. We've got many trainings for businesses. If you're a theater who doesn't know how to find out about open captions come to us we have contacts. We'd love to hear more Hearinglosslive.com. Oh teaser alert. There's gonna be some coffee shops that are going to be LIVE so watch for an area near you where you can come meet us in person and we can share some coffee. Bye. Hearing Loss LIVE! wants to meet you. Watch out on our website for times and locations for in person coffee chats. Have a good summer