The Dramaturgy of Mark Medoff

Download or read book The Dramaturgy of Mark Medoff written by and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Select social and academic communities accord cultural status to deafness and disability, but cultural designation remains an intensely debated topic among many culture non-members and a sensitive hot potato among culture group members. As a result and with alarming speed and regularity, an increasing number of scholars now examine multiple facets of deafness and disability and how culture members intersect with mainstream society. This much needed research helps to bring into perspective and to reconcile distinct segments of our pluralistic world. Yet relatively little in-depth research investigates how dramatic literature represents deaf or disability cultures or people; more specifically, although for centuries plays have developed a myriad of disabled characters, only a handful of plays have developed deaf characters. Given these combined circumstances, the entire fields of creativity and inquiry related to deafness are badly neglected. To date, only a small sprinkling of commercially produced playscripts include deaf characters or take deaf issues as their thematic through lines. It is not surprising, then, that no existing anthology groups plays about deafness in order to p