Power Productions New York, Inc and The National Aphasia Association present Night Sky, a play by Susan Yankowitz, playing off-Broadway at Baruch Performing Arts Center's Rose Nagelberg Theatre; 55 Lexington Avenue.
Night Sky is a play about what happens to a brilliant, articulate astronomer, her family and career when she is struck by a car and loses her ability to speak, a condition known as "aphasia." Aphasia is an acquired communication disorder that impairs a person’s ability to process language, but does not affect intelligence.
Jordan Baker plays Anna, the astronomer who acquires aphasia, and Dan Domingues plays an Aphasia patient, among other roles. On a personal note, the production was wonderful and the acting was great. Also featured are Lauren Ashley Carter, Tuck Milligan, Maria-Christina Oliveras and Jim Stanek. I had a chance to interview Jordan and Dan about their roles in Night Sky.
Acorn Jones: You both play characters who have Aphasia; Jordan, with your character starting without it, and developing and recovering from it during the course of the play, and Dan, playing a character that we are introduced to mid-condition, but we also see you playing many other non-aphasic characters. First off, the Aphasic language you speak during the show: Is it scripted Aphasically with a translation, or are you given the lines and have to translate yourself?
Jordan Baker: There are no scripted or phonetic translations of the language. As actors we had to interpret the meaning based on the intention of the scene. For instance, there is the moment where I am alone in the hospital bed and I discover my language has changed. The line reads “Gridge sac dibble… fujimagoo….fuji? huh?” Since the intention is discovery I made the choice that I would be trying to say “This bed is the worst….F—k!” and then recognize after the fact that I had said “Fujimagoo” and question “fuji?” that I have just said something absurd. The next line reads “Ake dis looloo I me bunder…huh? Huh?” I interpreted “what the hell did I just say?!” and the “huh?” is now deep awareness that something very bad has happened to me. The final line reads “I gimma babba…..inbane…mebane….huh? huh? huh?” The playwright has given a stage direction here of desperation – I interpreted the first part of the line to be a desperate attempt to say what I am actually thinking and then not hearing those words actually come out of my mouth. The final three “huh?” are a search for help from the outside world.
Dan Domingues: The playwright, Susan Yankowitz, didn’t write translations for our dialogue and I think that was vital to working on the play. The language we’re speaking after all is English but it was part of my own process to figure what I was struggling to relay and how to dramatize that struggle. I think the fact that the audience is trying to understand it as the characters are lends a real sense of immediacy to the play. The struggle for the person afflicted with aphasia is to be understood and for those around them to understand.
AJ: Jordan, what has been your experience playing Anna, who is incredibly well spoken at the beginning, and then spending the rest of the play re-learning how to communicate?
JB: Well, complicated journeys are the most interesting for an actor. It’s lovely to unpeel the layers of an onion, so to speak. I enjoy tearing the script apart from moment to moment and making choices about the colors of the character I want to reveal to the audience from scene to scene. The challenge in playing Anna is that she begins as a highly disciplined, intellectual woman who has high expectations of herself and those around her. She controls every aspect of her world. In order for her life to be valuable and of purpose to her she must constantly be challenged and pushing the limits of excellence. Those qualities can be very off putting and somewhat rigid to the outside observer. What’s wonderful is to start out as someone the audience doesn’t particularly like and through the journey of her deconstruction she becomes someone you empathize with and understand and respect for her ability to meet life’s challenges. While my character has strong language skill at the beginning and finds her way back to a form of communication – the real issue is her heart. In the end, Anna’s ability to experience empathy and generosity and forgiveness and to truly love intimately those around her for who they are and what they have to offer separate of her intellectual standard is the most interesting journey and for many of us the most difficult.
AJ: Dan, how difficult is it jumping back and forth from your Aphasic character to your non-Aphasic characters?
DD: It helps in this piece that I have some off-stage time to make the switch; that I’m not in back-to-back scenes where I needed to go back and forth quickly. But with that said, our director, Daniella [Topol], was very conscious of spots where there may be overlap. There was a moment where I chose to make one of my non-Aphasic characters halting and nervous and Daniella thought the audience might mistake that for aphasia so it was a matter of making a different choice. We really wanted to make the two worlds very distinct.
AJ: With Night Sky being sponsored by the National Aphasia Association, what has been your experience of the audience’s reaction, both for aphasic and non-aphasic audience members?
JB: We had a lot of opportunity to work with aphasic patients because of NAA’s involvement. I also had the opportunity to spend time at the Rusk Institute, here in New York, where the vast majority of aphasics receive therapy. We were fortunate to have aphasics sit in on rehearsals of the play and due to their involvement and generosity of spirit I went into the process feeling confident that I could translate their experience. Many have now come to the show and have been extremely generous with their thoughts on the work. Very little has been said on this subject and there are large numbers of people in our community who are challenged with this issue everyday. Aphasia is not age specific; it affects a wide range of people at many stages of life. Audience members outside the aphasic community don’t really know anything about aphasia. I was one of those people before I began the process of this play! When we learn that someone has had a stroke and that there is some paralysis or loss of speech we tend to believe that is how that person will be for the rest of their lives. But what the play teaches is that there is a wide range of healing after a stroke or brain injury. I have had several audience members tell me they knew nothing about aphasia and they were stunned that a person could suffer such challenge in their physical being and yet still be very much who they are mentally. One member said to me “It makes one stop and think for a moment before writing someone off as crazy! Or stupid!” For the aphasic there is the sense that the work they do everyday is not in vain. They see through both Anna and Dan’s aphasic patient the process for growth through hard work; and also Anna’s acceptance of her change and how that journey has made her a deeper person. The non-aphasic sees what their compassion and support can mean to the healing process. All in all it’s been very fulfilling.
DD: The response has been incredibly positive from those afflicted with aphasia and that was a huge relief for all of us. Early in our process we met with some people with aphasia and in some cases they became close friends of the production so we all felt an enormous responsibility to do right by their stories. They came to some rehearsals, gave their opinions on lines and interactions in the play, even made comments on certain costume and set pieces. They were an integral part of this production and approached it with open minds. They also understood that we needed to take some license with certain aspects for dramatic purposes. We just couldn’t have done it without them. They were great and we grew very close to them. For those without aphasia watching, I think the experience has been as illuminating as it’s been for us working on it. Most of my friends who’ve seen it had never heard of aphasia or now had a name for the thing they remember their grandfather or father or aunt going through. And many people are surprised at how funny the play is – I guess with the subject matter people don’t expect to laugh as much but the play has great humor and it’s nice to have people discover that.
AJ: Dan, in working with the language barrier, how did it inform how you play your Aphasic character? In the play you use your physicality to help you express what you want, was that a challenge to incorporate or did it come naturally with the barrier?
DD: People with aphasia are incredibly physical. They need to be in order to communicate. Their therapy stresses and encourages the use of their hands, face, whatever, to get the message across. Some people use pads and pens to give themselves clues to words or phrases. For example, if they’re trying to say a word that starts with H, it helps sometimes to write out the letter to spark the brain. So we were very conscious and Daniella constantly reminded us that the use of all our faculties was appropriate and necessary.
AJ: Do you see parallels between Aphasia and acting (specifically, the practice of acting as communication)?
DD: Well, that’s an interesting question. Hmm? I’m not sure how to answer that without sounding silly because aphasia is such a “real” issue, you know what I mean. But in the sense that aphasics really use their whole being, physical and mental, to communicate, there are certain parallels with acting. We’re taught as actors that acting is more than saying words, that it requires the whole body to be engaged. Listening and being truly present are supremely important too. That’s what aphasics do all the time so I could see where one could make a parallel. But in the end, we get to leave our work at the theatre or set and aphasics struggle constantly so the two really can’t compare. Actually, I don’t want to make it sound like all people afflicted with aphasia carry this tremendous burden around and it weighs on them. It does, I’m sure, but we also met some beautiful people with such generous, loving hearts who live their lives with aphasia but still laugh and joke and love and get angry and ... live, you know? They were really inspiring.
AJ: Anna has a goal for her recovery of being able to read her paper at a conference in Paris. Ultimately she is unable to finish the task, but does make a beautiful parallel comparing her paper to her life, which I would say is probably more beneficial to her healing process than the original goal. What are your thoughts about how the play ends and Anna’s through line / journey to this point?
JB: I was told at the Rusk Institute that the hardest part of the healing process for an aphasic is learning to let go of the person you were and accepting the person you have become. We all change in life, but over time, so our ego has time to accept and in some cases never even notice the change until many years later when we look back at who we were. The aphasic changes in an instant. It’s dramatic and does not feel like a blossoming but rather a tragic loss and in some ways a death. Initially, Anna’s desire is to get back to who she was; she believes she can be that person again through what she knows about hard work, discipline and mental control. When she stands at the conference in Paris reading her scientific paper badly she realizes she is not going to return to her former self. The former self has died and she finally in that moment accepts that truth. And only then is the door open for her to realize and accept that she is something else, not less, not dying, but something deeper and more interesting than she could ever have possibly imagined in her controlled intellectual world. The world now is full of the mystery she had been seeking through her study of the stars; she comes to understand the mystery in her everyday existence. It’s a very powerful understanding. Audience members have expressed to me how painful that speech is to hear and at the same time empowering.
AJ: My last question for both of you: Aphasia aside, how do these roles compare with other characters you have played? I don’t imagine you are playing them as Aphasia patients, but as people with wants and goals, like any other character. What makes these characters different for you? Are they familiar, or are they entirely new?
JB: There was only one other role where I was required to work with a physical impediment. It was Separation by Tom Kemspinski. I had a form of neuropathy which affected my ability to walk. Over the years, Three Tall Women, Othello, Macbeth, Spinning Into Butter, Defiance, among others have all been quite different from one another. Each character has its own challenge either physically, intellectually or emotionally. In this particular play, Night Sky, I will remember working with people who are healing from aphasia everyday. I think of certain ones everyday that touched my life during this process. I hope to see where they are at in the next few years and how they grow and who they become.
DD: Every character has obstacles. When it’s a physical one like in this play, the fight is a little more clear – it’s to be understood. But to simply play that would be missing all the other things going on in the play. I feel weird sometimes talking about “the process” of acting because so much of it happens between you and the others on stage and that’s sometimes hard to quantify. But, yes, the approach for me was similar to my approach on other roles – looking for what I want and going after it.
AJ: Thank you both for taking the time for ArtCo!
Night Sky plays at Baruch Performing Arts Center's Rose Nagelberg Theater: 55 Lexington Avenue; New York, NY 10010. The National Aphasia Association (NAA) is a nonprofit organization that promotes public education, research, rehabilitation and support services to assist people with aphasia and their families. http://www.aphasia.org/ http://www.nightskytheplay.com/
