Deaf Performance In Deaf Cultural Change

The living condition and the development of the hearing challenged community can reflect, tosome extent, the level of civilization of a county. With the development of market economy underthe reform and opening up policy, the social status of hearing challenged community has graduallyimproved. Meanwhile, the community’s understanding and awareness of their own culture andcommunity is also undergoing a quiet change.Before the nineteenth century, the hearing challenged community had always been considered apathological vulnerable groups and suffered from repeated discrimination by the society. Now,the community has evolved into a “sign language tribe” that distinguishes the community withtheir “native language”–the sign language. This reflects the change of the community’s ownunderstanding of themselves but also the attitude of the whole society on the hearing challengedcommunity. This is a demonstration of such ideologies as respect, equality and democracy.Affected by these changes, the hearing challenged community theatric art is also changing. From“use sign language to demonstrate the life of the hearing challenged community to people fromthe community " to “movement act to show the life of the community to outsiders”, the form andcontent of theatric art of the hearing challenged community is going through a earthshakingchange.In the background of human performance studies, we will have a more in-depth understanding ofthe culture of this special community by examining characteristics of the theatric art of the hearingchallenged community in different periods. From the changes of the hearing challengedcommunity, we can better understand the revolution of theatric culture as a whole. In a macroperspective, we will try to understand the changes of the theatrical art caused by the culturalchanges of the whole humanity in order for art to help establish a happier life of all human being.This paper discusses the characteristics of theatric art of the hearing challenged community. Byutilizing information collecting from the theatric art workshop for the hearing challengedcommunity held by Shanghai Institute of Technology, we will to elaborate on, compare andanalyze theatrical features in different periods. In the larger background of performance studies,we will further examine the theatrical art of the hearing challenged community in the culturalchange and analyze in the hope that this study will enable theatrical arts to be better developed andapplied in the hearing challenged community.