Customer Reviews

Children of a Lesser God.

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Written in the late 1970s and debuting on Broadway in 1980, CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD began as Mark Medoff's response to actress Phyllis Frelich's comment that few plays portrayed deaf and hearing-impaired people in a realistic manner. The resulting play shattered stereotypes and, in a very real sense, changed the way that society in general regarded people with hearing disabilities.

The story centers on the relationship between hearing James Leeds and deaf Sarah Norman, the former a teacher, the later a defiant woman who declines to communicate in any way other than sign language. Initial hostility turns into an affair; the affair turns into a marriage--but in the wake of the marriage the couple is repeatedly torn between the deaf and hearing worlds and Sarah's sudden determination that no one shall speak for her but herself.

CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD, which won an arm-load of Tony Awards, was among the very few non-musical plays that toured extensively in the 1980s. I myself had the opportunity to see one such tour and was startled when a group seated near me walked out on the show. "I thought this was going to be a play about those dear little deaf children!" a woman in the group loudly complained. No, it isn't, and after seeing or reading it you will find it difficult to think about people with hearing disabilities--or any other disability for that matter--in quite the same way. It is powerful stuff.

Many non-theatre people find playscripts difficult to read, and in truth playscripts are a blueprint for directors and actors and not intended as reading material for the general public. This is preface to the very basic statement that some plays "read" well and some do not. I must note that many readers may find it difficult to imagine how it is staged and how the sign language and various translation modes work on stage. It will be a bit of a challenge to some, but even so I strongly recommend it.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Our school recently did a one-act play version of "Children of a Lesser God." Let me say that the subject is very embracing: a hearing-impaired woman's struggle for acceptance in a hearing world. I find that the most qouted line in our play was from Sarah: "It is a silence full of sound." Truthfully, the most gut-wrenching scene is near the end, as the two main characters have an argument over lip-reading as opposed to signing. If you'll take my opinion, you should definately purchase this playbook. I considered it to be a real eye-opener.

Our school recently did a one-act play version of "Children of a Lesser God." Let me say that the subject is very embracing: a hearing-impaired woman's struggle for acceptance in a hearing world. I find that the most qouted line in our play was from Sarah: "It is a silence full of sound." Truthfully, the most gut-wrenching scene is near the end, as the two main characters have an argument over lip-reading as opposed to signing. If you'll take my opinion, you should definately purchase this playbook. I considered it to be a real eye-opener.

I really liked the plot of this book, but it was a little confusing because they have many scenes going on at the same time. The book is about a speech teacher trying to teacher a deaf person to speek and lip read. The topic is really interesting, because I haven't really read a lot of plays about the deaf, and the struggles that they go through. There is also a big romance in the book, but I think that the romance moves a little too quickly, and in that way is unrealistic. The play is in 2 short acts. I really liked the notes from the author in the beginning about the struggle to write this play because of a deaf friend, and about how it was put on in a small theater and then moved to broadway, and then it won a tony for best actress & actor, and best play! I suggest that you read it because it brings up a lot of interesting issues!

THE REVIEWS: Winner of the Tony Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award and the Drama Desk Award as best play of the season. A success both on Broadway and at the Mark Taper Forum, in Los Angeles, this deeply moving, beautifully written play details the romance and marriage of a sensitive but spirited deaf girl and the devoted (and hearing) young teacher whom she meets at a school for the deaf. "CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD, in short and in sum, is the season's unexpected find, a play unlike any other and immensely likable in its self-assertion." --NY Times. "CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD is an extraordinary play--illuminating, consistently interesting and moving." --Variety. "In any season this play would be a major event, a play of great importance, absorbing and interesting, full of love, understanding and passion." --NY Post. "...an authentic work of art." --The New Yorker.

THE STORY: After three years in the Peace Corps, James, a young speech therapist, joins the faculty of a school for the deaf, where he is to teach lip-reading. He meets Sarah, a school dropout, totally deaf from birth, and estranged both from the world of hearing and from those who would compromise to enter that world. Fluent in sign language, James tries, with little success, to help Sarah, but gradually the two fall in love and marry. At first their relationship is a happy and glowing one, as the gulf of silence between them seems to be bridged by their desire to understand each other's needs and feelings, but discord soon develops as Sarah becomes militant for the rights of the deaf and rejects any hint that she is being patronized and pitied. In the end the chasm between the worlds of sound and silence seems almost too great to cross...but love and compassion hold the hope of reconciliation, and a deeper, fuller understanding of differences that, in the final essence, can unite as well as divide.