Aidan Black<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAfter he began taking ASL classes, Black became intrigued, and ended up making ASL Studies his minor. He found it also helped with his acting.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore I started studying ASL, I had trouble with my facial expressions. That\u2019s a strong component of ASL since different signs mean different things depending on what your face is doing. That\u2019s helped me be aware of what my face is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Being able to use his skills in the play, his debut with Skylight, is important to Black.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s something I\u2019m very passionate about,\u201d he said. \u201cI always want to bridge my interests with what I\u2019m working on.\u201d<\/p>\n
UWM a good fit<\/h3>\n
Black, a senior, decided to major in musical theater when he was in high school in Portage, Wisconsin. UWM was on his short list of universities. \u201cI toured UWM first, and I was like, oh wow, I really like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
He auditioned for the role in \u201cSpring Awakening\u201d over the summer and got the callback this fall. Coincidentally, he was using ASL in another play, \u201cPeter and the Starcatcher,\u201d a prequel to Peter Pan that incorporated deaf and hearing actors.<\/p>\n
The Skylight production is based on a version of the play developed by Deaf West Theatre in California, which used deaf and hearing actors. \u201cThe difference is that our production has taken a specific look at the English-to-ASL translations as well as the signing presentation to make the production even more accessible,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s fine tuning the use of language so everyone can understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
A mix of actors<\/h3>\n
\u00a0The Skylight version incorporates seven deaf or hard of hearing actors, a few actors with some signing experience as well as some who have never signed before.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really crazy how well it works,\u201d Black said. \u201cIt\u2019s the same dialogue, the same script, but through a deaf perspective. The whole production is accessible for hearing and deaf audiences.\u201d<\/p>\n
Black, who also teaches children\u2019s classes at First Stage, hopes to keep up with his ASL as he continues his acting career after graduating in May. Creating a bridge between theater and Deaf culture is important to him, he said.<\/p>\n
Building those bridges is one of the reasons the Skylight\u2019s production is significant, Black said. \u201cHearing people don\u2019t have a lot of experience or understanding of deaf people. This is a very good introduction and a start to their journey with Deaf culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
Skylight is offering UWM students a special ticket price of $26 to see any \u201cSpring Awakening\u201d show. They can use the promo code SASTUDENT to receive up to two tickets at a discount on the Skylight Music Theatre website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aidan Black took an ASL course to fulfill a language credit at UWM. Now he\u2019s performing in an intriguing play that incorporates sign language into the show. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":835,"featured_media":130708,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[174],"tags":[],"section":[127,131],"display_categories":[352,116],"related-coverage":[],"uwmnews-feed":[344,347,164,148],"class_list":["post-130689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","section-arts-humanities","section-theater","display_categories-top-story-tertiary","display_categories-top-story-section","uwmnews-feed-arts-architecture","uwmnews-feed-community-engagement-professions","uwmnews-feed-arts","uwmnews-feed-education"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-28 15:51:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/835"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130689"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130713,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130689\/revisions\/130713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130689"},{"taxonomy":"section","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/section?post=130689"},{"taxonomy":"display_categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/display_categories?post=130689"},{"taxonomy":"related-coverage","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/related-coverage?post=130689"},{"taxonomy":"uwmnews-feed","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/uwmnews-feed?post=130689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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