ENTERTAINMENT

Louisville native makes Broadway debut

Elizabeth Kramer
@arts_bureau

When actress Sandra Mae Frank was born three months premature, she could hear. But slowly, her ability to talk and hear faded, according to her father, Bill Frank. By 3-years-old, she was deaf.

But Sandra Mae Frank, now 25, doesn’t count that as a burden. She celebrates it as a blessing, she wrote recently via an e-mail interview from New York.

“It’s what makes me different and it's why I am here,” she said.

Frank, who grew up in Louisville and went to DuPont Manual High School before transferring to the Kentucky School for the Deaf,  makes her Broadway debut on Sept. 8 as Wendla Bergmann in the revival of “Spring Awakening” produced by the Los Angeles-based company Deaf West Theatre.

The company originally opened its take on “Spring Awakening” —the rock musical with music by Duncan Sheik and a book and lyrics by Steven Sater that won eight Tony Awards including Best Musical in 2007 — to highly positive reviews in the summer of 2014. The production got another L.A. engagement earlier this year before the announcing July that it would go to Broadway, where it also will feature Marlee Matlin, winner of the Oscar and Golden Globe awards for her work in the film “Children of a Lesser God,” and Emmy Award-winner Camryn Manheim who was in the show “The Practice.”

The musical, based on Frank Wedekind’s 1891 drama about a group of teenagers discovering their sexual identities and questioning authority, includes Wendla, a naïve girl who opens the musical pleading with her reserved mother to tell her how babies are made, and Melchior Gabor, magnetic and smart student whose romantic connection with Wendla results in tragedy.

A creative approach to casting a musical with deaf actors

In the Deaf West Theatre production directed by Michael Arden, the cast includes both deaf and hearing actors who perform alongside each other in American Sign Language and English.

Frank credited Arden, a hearing actor in Deaf West Theatre’s first Broadway production in 2003 of “Big River” in which he played Tom Sawyer, for his work with "Spring Awakenings."

“He knows and understand deaf culture more than any hearing directors I've ever worked with,” said Frank, particularly in understanding the music. “He works closely with us to find the story behind every song and how to express it in ASL.”

Arden, who usually works with the cast through an ALS interpreter, said Frank and he also work well together when he signs himself. He works with her and the other deaf and hearing cast member on the music by asking not only the deaf actors to be aware of the vibrations they can feel from music, but for all actors to be able to describe what a song is doing outside of the lyrics, from the orchestration and harmonies down to the individual instruments.

“We talk, for example, about what the cello is doing in a song and I have the actors watch what the instrument is doing and describe it,” said Arden in a telephone interview from New York. “It’s good to do that because anytime you can articulate something clearly, it means you understand it and can execute the music and the words.”

The next challenge is getting the sign language to match the spoken text and vice versa in both meaning and time during performances.

But the duel casting of roles means Arden has to provide a storytelling justification for having two bodies on stage, he said. Frank’s counterpart is actress and musician Katie Boeck, who sings and plays guitar on stage. Those reasons can be different for different characters, he said. For Wendla, Boeck’s voice is Wendla’s “older reflection looking back on herself — whereas with Moritz, the verbal actor is his demon or shadow.”

Arden said over the past year, Frank has developed Wendla into a character with more depth and understanding of a girl living in the late 19th century. He described Frank’s earlier interpretation as having a lot of excitement and energy that has grown to find stillness and gentleness.

“Now, I think it’s really beautiful what she’s doing,” he added. “It’s been amazing to watch her really find greater confidence and skill as an actor.”

Fast track to Broadway

Frank’s quick trajectory to taking the state as a Broadway actor could be traced, in part, to dressing up in costumes and filming skits with friends as a child and appearing in “Crimes of the Heart” at Manual High School, under director Clint Vaught, who died in 2011, as Chick Boyle, the nosy neighbor of the play’s three eccentric sisters.


She carried that new-found confidence to Kentucky School for the Deaf, which didn’t have any drama courses. So, she immersed herself in photography and film there to challenge her creativity. She later attended Washington-based Gallaudet University, the only university in the world for deaf people, where she majored in education because she wasn’t sure about the viability of pursuing acting. “He added one more character (to that production) and that role was my character's best friend who also happened to interpret everything for me on the stage, and it was done naturally,” Frank said. “That's when I realized — it doesn't matter if I am deaf.”

That is until a teacher, Monique Holt — who is also deaf and had made theater a career for herself — convinced Frank that her passion should be her guide.

“I could feel the passion inside me flowing, my heart giving its all and it just felt right,” Frank said about the emotion she experienced on stage. “It felt like it was meant for me. This is what I was born to do.”

Frank soon changed her major to theater at Gallaudet,  the only college offering a Bachelor of Arts degree in theater specifically for deaf people.

After graduating in 2013, she stuck around the Washington, D.C. area and got professional acting jobs in addition to working as a teacher assistant at Model Secondary School for the Deaf.

The big break

Early in 2014, Frank learned about the call for actors for Deaf West Theatre’s production and sent in a tape of herself performing a song in sign language from the musical “Rent.” Arden described the audition video as “so emotionally connected” that he and others leading the production requested another tape from Frank with scenes from the play.

Frank still remembers on June 3, 2014, getting the e-mail message with the offer for the role of Wendla.

“My heart just stopped right there,” she said.

The initial “Spring Awakening” productions in Los Angeles brought her family out to see her as well as Ethan Sinnott, chair of Gallaudet University’s theater arts department who directed Frank in two productions when she was a student and later acted in a professional production with her in the Washington area. (Three other former students were part of that Los Angeles “Spring Awakening” production.)


Her father, Bill Frank, who saw her performance with her stepmother and two sisters, said it “blew me away.”“Sandra was a smart choice for the doomed Wendla,” said Sinnott. “Her performance did not skimp on the raw pathos integral to the character, making hearts ache and eyes water.”

And Frank was quick to credit her family for their encouragement.

“They already supported me when they found out I wanted to make acting my profession for real,” she said. “And here I am. I definitely made the right choice.”

Being a deaf artist

Frank’s journey to Broadway has been swift, but timing is on her side.

“This is the kind of trajectory we don’t normally get to see, unfortunately, because there are so few opportunities for deaf actors,” said Arden, who acknowledged that he didn’t know any deaf people before he auditioned for Deaf West Theatre’s production of “Big River.”

But Arden, Frank and Sinnott are seeing more opportunities for deaf artists. Frank noted the ABC Family drama series “Switched at Birth” that has hearing and deaf cast members including Matlin, as well as Nyle DiMarco as the first deaf contestant on America’s Next Top Model. Sinnott cited actor Russell Harvard’s role as the hitman Mr. Wrench on the television mini-series “Fargo.” (Harvard, who was born into a deaf family and has acted in Deaf West Theatre, has limited hearing. He also is in the “Spring Awakening” cast.)

Sinnott credited much of this to the deaf community’s presence on social media, a place where their inability to speak isn’t noticeable to readers so walls aren’t quick to go up. He added that deaf artists are very aware that they are ambassadors, teacher and trailblazers whose success stories can inspire other deaf people to pursue artistic endeavors and engender respect and wider acceptance from the hearing public.

Frank definitely sees her story as an inspirational one for herself and others.

“It gives me hope for the future — for deaf actors all over to audition for roles they want and be confident about it,” she said. “I shouldn't let the system decide what I can or cannot do — only what I want to do and how far will I go to achieve my passion as a deaf actress. I just simply cannot hear. That's it.”

Elizabeth Kramer can be reached at (502) 582-4682 and and ekramer@courier-journal.com. Follow her on Twitter @arts_bureau on Twitter and on Facebook at Elizabeth Kramer - Arts Writer.

MORE ON THE NEW 'SPRING AWAKENING'

“Spring Awakening,” a production from Deaf West Theatre on Broadway. Performed simultaneously in American Sign Language and English.

When: Sept. 8 through Jan. 9

Where: Brooks Atkinson Theatre, 256 W. 47th St., New York, NY

Information: www.springawakeningthemusical.com and www.deafwest.org; 877-250-2929