Seeing 120 live shows a year makes it very difficult to have a truly novel experience at the theatre. The truly offbeat, truly original stuff can be exceedingly hard to come by. And while I’m really fond of the experimental, I know it’s not for everyone. For instance, I think playwright Peter J. Woods’ best stuff is absolutely brilliant. My wife hates it though . . . and I can understand why. Liysa Callsen’s two-person one—woman show Codadiva is a truly rare experience at the theatre—one that is both completely original and completely accessible.
Walking into the first of Liysa Callsen’s two performances of Codadiva at the Vox Box, I knew I was in for something different. It appeared to me as though I was the only person in the room unable to speak sign language. The odd thing about being in a studio theatre prior to a show with a room full of people speaking in sign language was that one can still that standard, pre-show murmur. (Somethings are evidently universal.)
A Child Of Deaf Adults, Callsen’s monologue is delivered almost entirely in sign language. Fellow CODA Catherine Siudzinski interprets the signs for those of us not familiar with the language. Being someone from outside the culture of the hearing impaired, I had only really been familiar with sign language from watching interpreters. With a sign interpreter—or any other kind of interpreter for that matter—the emphasis seems to be on the basics of getting the message across in simple translation.
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It’s a different experience altogether to see a deaf person actually communicating in casual conversation. There’s more emotion—more personal flair in communication. I recall seeing a pair of deaf people argue on a Milwaukee County bus some time ago. It was fascinating . . . but what Callsen’s doing here elevates that kind of personal, emotional expression through sign language to kind of a graceful art form. Callsen’s signing here is beautiful and deeply expressive. There’s a strong element of Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin here--Callsen’s sense of the comic come across in strikingly vivid detail. It’s a sense of humor that can swiftly change gears into the deeper end of human emotion.
In the course of the show, Callsen is relating what it’s like to be caught between three different cultures—that of the hearing world, that of the deaf world and that of the CODA world. Delivered almost entirely in sign language, the Codadiva exposes the rest of us to two cultures that aren’t very visible to the rest of the culture as a whole.
The biography that Callsen is delivering here is really interesting. If it’s lacking anything, it’s a bigger, more thematically cohesive overall composition. Codadiva consists of many smaller narratives that fit into the larger history of Callsen’s life and the life of her parents. While the roughly chronological re-telling of the past makes a simple kind of sense, Callsen presents the stories without much embellishment or analysis—it’s a presentation style that allows the audience its own reaction, which is admirable, but the stories would feel that much more captivating if they were woven a bit more elaborately into a single narrative framework. Callsen’s visual expression is irresistibly charming. Given just the right attention to blending that performance into a more cohesive narrative format would make Codadiva that much more powerful. As it stands even without a brilliant overall sense of composition, Liysa Callsen’s Codadiva is a refreshingly unique kind of stage performance in an intimate studio theatre environment.
Liysa Callsen’s Codadiva runs for one more performance at Lisa Golda’s studio The Vox Box in the Marian Center for Non-Profits. The April 2nd show starts at 7pm. For reservations, visit Callsen’s Codadiva site.
