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Photo by Drew Fleming Sean Whitaker signs information to Steve Wasserman, left, who teaches hearing-impaired children at Scenic Middle School in Central Point, during a workshop on dramatic interpretation. Drama without sound Interpreters learn to sign stage plays Performance Dottie Rundles and Linda Sasser will interpret an Ashland High School performance of "The Miracle Worker" today at 10 a.m. at the school's Mountain Avenue Theater, 201 S. Mountain Ave. Tickets are $3 and may be purchased at the door. By BILL KETTLER ASHLAND -- Drama only works if you can hear the dialogue. Rundles and Linda Sasser came to Ashland Sunday to show how to make the stage come alive for people who can't hear. Rundles and Sasser work as freelance sign-language interpreters. They interpret in doctors' offices, law courts and workplaces. They also interpret live drama, translating actors' words into American Sign Language. Eighteen local sign-language interpreters came to their workshop to get a taste of a craft that blends an interpreter's skills with the stage sense of an actor. "You try to integrate interpreting with what's happening on the stage," said Rundles, a Portland interpreter who has interpreted plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. "In many ways it's like regular interpreting," she said. "You're getting somebody else's words and putting them out in sign language. "It's also very much like acting. You have to be able to find a way to sign the dialogue without taking away from any action on the stage." Interpreters typically work in teams, dividing the roles so that they can sign back and forth when characters are talking to each other. Like actors, they may spend weeks memorizing a script. They also need to understand their characters' minds so they can convey the subtleties of their speech in sign language. "You have to know everything an actor or a director would know," said Sasser, who often works as Rundles' partner in theater interpretation. "You have to know the characters to make your signing and expressions look like they look," said Rundles. "You try to make yourself look a little like the characters on the stage," said Rundles. "If they're big and strong and mean, you make your signs a little bigger and you might walk with a scowl on your face." "But it's a fine line," she said. "We're not the actors." Rundles said interpreters also have to choose a wardrobe that doesn't distract the audience from the play. "Deciding what to wear is really important," said Rundles. "We need to blend in and not stick out. What we wear has to be dark and solid so our hands stand out. We wear a lot of black." To show the complexity of interpreting theater, Rundles and Sasser asked the local interpreters to imagine how they would stage a scene from "The Miracle Worker," a play about Helen Keller overcoming blindness and deafness to communicate. They had to divide the characters into two groups, develop name signs for each character, and discuss how they would sign the dialogue while a young Helen throws a fit and pandemonium breaks out. "That showed me how complex theater interpretation can be," said Steve Wasserman, who teaches hearing impaired children at Scenic Middle School in Central Point. "The situation has to be fluid. There's always a conflict between the dialog and the action." "It's far more complex than I realized," said Sally Blessing, an educational interpreter at Scenic Middle School. "It's fascinating." Rundles said theater patrons who can hear generally seem to accept an interpreter's presence during a play. "People usually say one of two things: `After a few minutes I forgot you were there,' or `It was so beautiful I watched you for the whole performance."' Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA