<p>I’m so excited to read this! Because my daughter is fluent in ASL, we’ve always tried to attend shows with interpreters, but it is really hard to find shows that are shadowed. I’m really glad to see the effort being made to open up theatre to the Deaf community, as well as to open the eyes (ears) of the hearing to the language of the Deaf.</p>
<p>One of my daughter’s few complaints about Otterbein is that although they offer ASL, they don’t treat it as a foreign language for distribution requirements. ASL IS a language, with its own grammar, syntax and vocabulary, and she’s mentioned to me more than once that she finds it disappointing that Otterbein views it as somehow academically sub-standard to spoken language. Whether she decides to agitate about this at any point remains to be seen, but I know it’s something she’s thought about quite a bit.</p>