Grumpy Old Deafies

Out of interest Jen, if a Deaf play was indeed crap (not saying that Playing God is crap as I haven't seen it myself) would you have written a bad review or would you have fudged it?

I wonder how many people do this?

Dawn :)

Heh, good question! For the record, like I said in my review, I enjoyed Playing God but was disappointed with the political arguments which I thought were outdated. However, they did reflect arguments which I still see being used within the Deaf community itself, so you can't blame them. (Personally I think we need to 'get with the program' and go down the bilingual and bioethical path, but I'm going off the point here!)

Back on the point, I think people are generally honest when reviewing - I know I am - otherwise this misses the point of a review, does it not? However, I admit to 'fudging' a review many years ago when I saw a play that was really bad and I simply couldn't think of anything good to say about it but I didn't want to discourage them because everyone has to start somewhere, right? So I used a sarcastic tone, which seemed to work.

The Deaf community is too small for some things, methinks, including too much honesty, perhaps? :-s

As for the political arguments used within the play, whereas we, the Deaf community and its stakeholders, are probably a lot more advanced in our awareness concerning CIs. We might think it is old hat.

As for introduction this topic to the mainstream public, don't you think the play provided a good platform touching on this topic? It is Deafinitely Theatre's intention to make Deaf Theatre as a vehicle for Deaf/cultural/perception issues, among other stuff, and making it accessible to hearing audience.