Oedipus Rex plucks his eyes out in Sophocles’ Greek tragedy, but Tribes may make theatergoers feel like tearing their ears off. Written by British playwright Nina Raine (grand-niece of Doctor Zhivago author Boris Pasternak, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature), Tribes is largely about a literate yet dysfunctional family whose members often don’t hear each other talk — figuratively and literally. The protagonist is Billy, a hearing-impaired young man portrayed by Russell Harvard.
Along with most of his fellow cast members at the Mark Taper Forum, Harvard is reprising the role he first brought to the stage of the Barrow Street Theatre in 2012, earning him the Theatre World Award for outstanding debut performance, as well as outstanding lead actor nominations by the Drama League, Outer Critics Circle and Lucille Lortel Awards. The Off-Broadway production of Tribes scored the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best foreign play and the Drama Desk Award for best new play.
The role of Billy seems tailor-made for Harvard, although Raine’s drama was actually commissioned by and premiered at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 2010. None of the original cast made the trans-Atlantic crossing to appear in the Manhattan or LA productions, but four of the six New York cast members are in the LA production.
Wearing a hearing aid in his right ear, Harvard could be called multi-lingual, as he can speak and read lips (the oralism method of deaf education), can communicate in and read American Sign Language (ASL), and is able to hear some sounds. During an interview in his upstairs dressing room at the Mark Taper Forum, Harvard signed passionately while he also used his voice to speak his thoughts about his origins, the deaf community, the acting life, Tribes and his Method mentor and There Will Be Blood colleague, the three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis.
Harvard was born in 1981 in Pasadena, Texas and moved a year later to Austin, so “my brother could go into the deaf school, where my mother and father went, where my grandparents went. It was established in 1856. I went to an oral school at first — I had residual hearing and my mom thought it was the best decision. But I was not a happy child at that time”¦ I remember just crying every day, and my mom decided to bring me to a deaf school and I was very happy there [at the Texas School for the Deaf].  I was very much involved in theater in the deaf school and graduated in 1999. I decided to attend Gallaudet University,” the nation’s foremost institution of higher learning for deaf and hard-of-hearing students, established in Washington, DC during the Civil War by Congress and President Lincoln.
Harvard underwent a period of indecision about his career course, pondering whether — given the vicissitudes of a profession notoriously lacking in job security — he should pursue acting full-time or become a physical therapist. As he tried to find his proper footing on a job path, Harvard left and returned to Gallaudet.
During a three-year stint at Alaska, he worked as a live-in staffer with seven deaf pupils from all over the Last Frontier state’s villages. They attended a program based in Anchorage. Harvard went on to become a teacher’s assistant at a pre-school and considered becoming a theater teacher, so he returned in 2004 to Gallaudet, graduating in 2008. “That’s where my career shifted into acting — I majored in theater, educational drama, teaching theater. But I’ve not been teaching”¦ I’ve been trying to pursue my masters. I’ve been working as an actor ever since.”
He readily admits that he would indeed rather spend his time acting, which Harvard likens to an “addiction that’s always entertaining.” Although those gigs aren’t always there, Harvard is “taking the risk,” and so far he’s had success landing roles on the stage and the big and little screens. At Gallaudet in 2006 he appeared in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire as the Ghost of Allen Gray (Blanche’s dead husband) and had a more substantial part as Claudio in the Bard’s Much Ado About Nothing.
So far, Harvard’s career highlight was There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson’s film adaptation of an Upton Sinclair novel. “That was my first [professional] gig, my first experience in auditioning, in the process, the whole entertainment industry, how it works.” Perhaps the most profound part of that undertaking was working opposite Daniel Day-Lewis, who portrayed Daniel Plainview, the prospector-turned-oil-tycoon who adopts H.W., the son of an employee killed while on the job. Harvard depicted H.W. as an adult, and in a harrowing scene that would have been right at home at an ancient Greek amphitheater, there is a father-son confrontation wherein Plainview derides H.W. as “a bastard in a basket.” As H.W. exits, Plainview continues to insult him in voice off, which alludes to the deafness H.W. incurred as a boy following an oil rig explosion.
Reflecting upon this initial experience, with his hands occasionally excitedly smacking together, eliciting a crackling clap as he signs, Harvard confesses, “There’s one thing that — if I can share with you — that I would change that I did in the past, I could have been more “˜Method.’ But at that time I was, you know, fascinated with how everything was working. I had many hearing people asking me, “˜Oh, what’s the sign for this or that,’ and I thought that was cool, making some network connection. Looking at Daniel Day-Lewis working, it was amazing because he would always segregate himself from me because of the character. He was 24/7 into the character, and I was like this is something that I need to be doing, I should have been staying in my trailer room, quiet, focusing on my character. That’s what I’ve been doing with other roles.”
These include his stint in the dual roles of the Orderly and the Groundskeeper’s Son in the Deaf West Theatre and Center Theatre Group production of the musical “Sleeping Beauty Wakes, [which] came after There Will Be Blood“¦ I interpreted songs in sign language”¦ We had actors who were hearing, they were singing for me and three actors who were onstage playing the music”¦ called GrooveLily. They also wrote the songs” for this modern retelling of the Grimm Brothers’ Prince Charming/Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, performed in 2007 at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City.
“[Deaf West Theatre founder] Ed Waterstreet’s vision was to see the music playing on the stage and not in the orchestra,” sequestered offstage out of the audience’s line of sight, says Harvard. “He wanted to be able to see them singing and actors signing. So there would be this lady who would be voicing for Sleeping Beauty, but she’s on the second floor railing, playing the violin and she’s singing. And Sleeping Beauty is signing the song. So it’s a win-win situation for deaf and hearing audiences.”
Regarding the recently retired Waterstreet, Harvard says: “A lot of the productions wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for Ed Waterstreet and for his company. I mean, I applaud all his effort in establishing the company in 1992 and it’s still been running ever since. A great, great visionary guy — really is a wonderful guy. Sad to see him go, but I’m happy we have a new person who’s working with fresh ideas. We’ll see how it goes from here,” says Harvard, adding that it’s too soon to tell how DWT’s new artistic director, David Kurs, compares with his predecessors.
In Lynne Heffley’s Performances Magazine article regarding Tribes, Kurs is quoted as saying: “”˜the art of sign language theater made accessible’ to a broad audience is the “ultimate form of activism.’” Asked to respond, Harvard notes: “Yes. But I still hope — I don’t know how many people are coming to see the show. I just hope that there are a lot of audiences that are going to come to see the captioned or the interpreted shows. In New York we would wait for deaf people to reach out to the theaters to say we want a caption of it. If they don’t do that, they won’t get it up. Because there’s no reason to if they’re not going to come”¦ But here it’s already automatic because we have David working closely with the theater group, so that helps. I think in LA there’s a larger deaf community compared to New York, I think it’s spread out. Most of the time, me living in New York, I’m not really socializing with deaf friends or people. I live in the West Village”¦ and I socialize mostly with my co-workers.”
The actor believes “this show is more targeting hearing audience”¦ because [Tribes] is not fully done in ASL. I had a friend who was hearing and brought a deaf friend. They didn’t know that this show was not all captioned or the projections were surtitled and he left the show”¦ If”¦ it was interpreted and captioned it would be more accessible.” Harvard neatly sums up the sense of exclusion of deaf and hard-of-hearing ticket buyers: “I don’t want to be the last person laughing” — or, in the case of Tribes, crying. So at special performances during its LA run the entire show is being accompanied by two ASL interpreters.
Harvard believes that a new breakthrough in technology called I-Caption can best bridge this gap to make theater more available for deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences. The Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts calls I-Caption “a revolutionary hand-held captioning system for deaf and hard-of-hearing theatergoers, the newest and latest development offered as part of these special services. An automated system, it receives the signal from the master system and displays verbatim texts of the entire show, including lyrics, announcements, and show information.”
Even if I-Caption helps to resolve this issue for spectators, deaf and hard-of-hearing actors still have to contend with specific issues. Typically, during rehearsals, many people speak at once, and though Harvard has had an ASL signer, “the interpreter’s always a little bit behind, so she can process in her brain how to translate in ASL. They’re already laughing; and I’m laughing later.”
Sleeping Beauty Wakes, Harvard adds, “was so much fun for me, compared to Tribes, which is very intense, a lot of work went into this show. My British accent — in Sleeping Beauty my mode of communication was sign language, no voicing for me. But this show is all my voice and signing — two things. So it’s more stressful with this job”¦ I had a dialect coach come to the rehearsal process in New York City. But [in LA] we’ve had maybe two times a dialect coach came to help with the British accent”¦ My co-actor, Susan Pourfar, who plays my girlfriend [Sylvia] in the show, she helped me a lot with my accent clarity.”
Ben Brantley, in his New York Times review of the Off-Broadway production, noted that “Even the assumed British accents feel organic.” Harvard adds that in the current cast, only one actor hails from the UK, where Oxford-educated Raine sets the story — “Gayle Rankin [playing Harvard’s character’s sister] is from Scotland, but she has got a Cockney accent, so that makes her sound British, which makes her very valuable to the production.”
Harvard has directed deaf versions of musicals such as Grease, and his screen credits include the lead role in the 2010 biopic The Hammer, about deaf wrestler and mixed martial artist Matt Hamill. He made his first network TV appearance in the “Silent Night” episode of the CBS crime series CSI: NY, opposite the trailblazing deaf actress Marlee Matlin, who won the best actress Oscar for her breakout role in 1986’s Children of a Lesser God.
When asked how he would respond to those who’d say deaf and hard-of-hearing thespians are actors of a lesser god, Harvard replied:
“I want to disagree, but it’s a little bit sad but true…We need writers and casting directors to be fearless in working with actors who happen to be deaf. I’m a little bit exhausted with being called in a category of deaf performers. Do hearing actors have a category of their own, apart from “˜A list,’ “˜B list,’ “˜D list’? Another factor is that budgets are limited, so interpreters are usually pricey, expensive. I think it’s time to let go of that and be more independent in the business. I have confronted issues that interpreters are being paid more than actors. We need to do this more on our own, using different modes of communications, like iPhones, smartphones, voice recognitions, apps, laptops using word dots. I know it isn’t the fastest mode, but it’s doable.”
When asked if Harvard is his real name, the Tribes lead asserts, “Sure is,” then playfully adds: “People have asked me if my family owns part of Harvard University and I always trick them and say “˜yeah’”¦ My mom’s maiden name is Youngblood, and I’ve often thought that should probably be my star name. But my mom said, “˜no — Harvard is just right.’” Audiences shouldn’t be surprised if Russell Harvard graduates and joins the ranks of acting’s Ivy League.
Tribes, Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles 90012. Tue-Fri 8 pm, Sat 2:30 pm and 8 pm, Sun 1 pm and 6:30 pm. Through April 14. www.centertheatregroup.org. 213-628-2772.
**All Tribes production photos by Craig Schwartz.
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