When: Fri., April 14, 7:30-9:30 p.m., Sat., April 15, 2-4 & 7:30-9:30 p.m. and Sun., April 16, 2-4 p.m. 2023
Deaf Republic takes place in an unspecified time of political unrest in an occupied territory. The story unfolds in episodic poems, opening with the shooting of a young deaf boy at a protest. In response, the entire town adopts deafness as a strategy of resistance. The poems explore how language enables resistance to power and how the lives of the townspeople are scarred by political violence. Written in English by Ilya Kaminsky, a hard-of-hearing Ukraine immigrant who grew up in Rochester, Deaf Republic is performed in ASL as part of the 2023 Big Read organized by NTID.