Hamilton's witty, fast-paced lyrics flow through fingers of sign language interpreters

Meg Jones | Milwaukee

Show Caption Hide Caption Lin-Manuel Miranda debuts 'Hamilton' in Puerto Rico After performance, composer-actor calls Trump's latest plan to finance border wall 'abolutely monstrous' (Jan. 11)

As the opening lines of the blockbuster musical Hamilton are spoken by an actor portraying Aaron Burr at the Marcus Performing Arts Center in Milwaukee, Pamela Sue Conine's hands start to move and flash.

The American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter uses her fingers to explain how a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman born on a Caribbean island becomes a hero and a scholar.

Then Maria Rivera signs lines spoken by the actor portraying Revolutionary War soldier John Laurens revealing how the $10 Founding Father without a father got a lot farther by working a lot harder.

Standing at stage left with a dim spotlight illuminating them, Conine, Rivera and Sandi Smith are taking deaf and hard-of-hearing Hamilton fans on a journey that's different from audience members who can hear, but just as fascinating and exhilarating.

And just as it must be incredibly difficult for Hamilton actors to learn their lines, it's also a tremendous challenge for ASL interpreters to translate and perform the play.

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More than 20,000 words are crammed into the almost 2 ½-hour Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, an astounding 144 words per minute by one estimate. Making sense of the intricate, dense, rapid-fire lyrics for deaf and hard of hearing patrons during the three weeks a touring Hamilton show is in Milwaukee takes a special talent.

Though Hamilton actors follow a script, there's no guide for ASL interpreters. Because of copyright laws there are no YouTube videos of interpreters at Hamilton performances to watch how others handle it. Lin-Manuel Miranda, who did not respond to interview requests, did not write suggestions for an ASL translation of his play.

Learning every line spoken and sung in a musical and deciding how to interpret the words and music is complicated and detailed.

ASL interpreters at concerts and theatrical performances don't sign every word or phrase. Instead they explain the essence of what's being said and put the words into context.

Conine and Smith have worked together interpreting theatrical performances at the Marcus Center since 2002, around 100 musicals and plays, and they occasionally interpret at other Milwaukee theaters. However, Hamilton is a completely different animal with lyrics that rhyme, have double and triple meanings and pour forth in torrents.

"It's the hardest interpreting I've ever prepared for in 31 years in this field," said Smith, who portrays Alexander Hamilton and King George III.

Aside from the roller coaster-like pace, it's also difficult to interpret hip hop and rap.

"While you don't want to look like a rapper in a music video, you want to give a sense of the rhythm and beat. That's a difficult line to walk," Smith said.

ASL performances are usually the Saturday matinee of a touring show. Since Hamilton is visiting Milwaukee for three weeks, and because ticket demand is so high, Conine, Rivera and Smith are performing for all three Saturday matinees including this Saturday and Nov. 9.

For every show in recent memory at the Marcus Center, ranging from "The Lion King" to "The Book of Mormon," only two ASL interpreters were needed to handle the interpretation. But Conine and Smith knew they would need a third interpreter, and Marcus Center officials agreed to hire another person.

"I can't even imagine how Sandi and I would have done this had it just been the two of us. I probably would have passed out on the stage," Conine said.

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Conine is an associate professor and coordinator of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Interpreter Training Program. Conine asked Rivera, who graduated from UWM's program in 2009, if she wanted to sign Hamilton. This is the first professional theatrical performance for Rivera, an experience she calls "baptism by fire."

For shows like "Dear Evan Hansen" or "Les Miserables," Smith and Conine buy the music CDs, read the lyrics, discuss how to divide the roles, devise their interpretations and memorize them. A few weeks before the show they get the script. They attend one of the early performances and jot notes on staging and mannerisms of the actors whose roles they will portray.

But Hamilton took much more work. Smith estimates she spent three times as long on Hamilton as she does for another show.

There were many more in-person meetings among the interpreters and the preparation started much earlier than normal. Rivera began working on the show in late June, listening to the CD hundreds of times on her two-hour round trip commute to work at Wisconsin School for the Deaf in Delavan, and listening to the audio version of Ron Chernow's Hamilton biography on which the musical is based.

All three noticed that the pace on the "Hamilton" soundtrack CD is slightly faster than the live show, which made their first performance a bit easier since they had practiced at a quicker rate.

Each interpreter used a deaf mentor, a coach who is deaf and is very proficient in American Sign Language. For difficult passages in songs — and there were quite a few — the interpreters asked their deaf mentors for advice.

While Smith and Conine have consulted with trusted deaf mentors on other shows, "Hamilton" was the first where coaches were used so often. In addition to one-on-one sessions, deaf coaches Christopher Rawlings, Jake Hartmann and Scott Kendziorski also met with all three interpreters for hours-long meetings.

For example, Smith was having trouble in the song "Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)" where Hamilton tells his soldiers to remove the bullets from their weapons before an assault. Hamilton raps "Get yo bullets out yo guns, get yo bullets out yo guns ... We cannot let a stray gunshot give us away."

Smith told Rawlings she couldn't sign that fast enough.

"He said finger spell it fast the first time, and when (the company says) 'What?' instead of repeating the line, use your hands to hold the gun and tip it to show the idea of the bullet coming out the gun," said Smith, a staff ASL interpreter at Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin.

"That worked so beautifully. That’s why we used deaf advisers. We were so hung up on what to say and they said 'Do this,'" Smith said.

Rawlings, a standup comedian who lives in Whitewater, was thrilled to consult on the ASL interpretations for the Milwaukee appearances of "Hamilton."

"American Sign Language is a different language, it has a different foundation. Music is generally words," said Rawlings, who plans to attend Saturday's matinee with his wife. "We have to change that so it becomes sort of (three-dimensional,) like a visual thing."

Because Rivera had never interpreted a professional theatrical performance, she began her preparation by literally translating the words. But Conine and Smith explained why that would not work, that the interpretations must incorporate the actual meaning and intent behind the words.

"When I started meeting with Pam and Sandi, I would say this is what I was thinking for this line. They would say 'No, this is what they mean,'" said Rivera, who portrays Angelica Schuyler, George Washington, Hercules Mulligan, Laurens, Maria Reynolds and Philip Schuyler.

To prepare for the challenging song "Satisfied" sung by Hamilton's future sister-in-law Angelica Schuyler, Rivera painstakingly went through every word and line to determine the meaning. Then, with the help of her deaf coach Kendziorski, she came up with signs for the words and when she simply did not have enough time to use signs, particularly during the fast rapping parts of the song, she decided to use facial expressions.

She wrote out the signs to use for sequences when Angelica sings about matching wits with Hamilton.

"ASL does not have a written form, if you could see my notes it looks silly. However, when you put those notes into 3D, it makes sense," Rivera said.

Once she nailed down her interpretation of "Satisfied," Rivera practiced signing it without listening to the music to create muscle memory.

"Then I started with the music. I would get two lines in and I would screw up and start over. Every time I went through it I got further and further along. Once I got it down, I committed it to memory. I literally practiced that one section at least a hundred times," said Rivera, a Milwaukee Riverside High School graduate.

In the play, Hamilton frequently talks about "not throwing away his shot," which proved a challenge to Smith because the phrase is used in several contexts. One means Hamilton is going to take every opportunity he gets, one means to climb socially, one refers to a glass of alcohol and one refers to holding up a dueling weapon and firing into the air.

Smith had to devise interpretations for each meaning. For example when Hamilton sings "I'm just like my country, I'm young, scrappy and hungry, and I'm not throwing away my shot" Smith signed this: I same people here America. Young. Assertive. Motivated. I do. Succeed will."

As Burr, Conine interprets two of the most well-known songs: "Wait For It" and "The Room Where It Happens." She also portrays Eliza Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Marquis de Lafayette, James Reynolds, Charles Lee and Peggy Schuyler.

"The Room Where it Happens" is about a meeting between Jefferson, James Madison and Hamilton, who as Secretary of the Treasury is having difficulty getting his financial plan through Congress. At the secret meeting, Hamilton agrees to a compromise that moves the nation's capital from New York to Washington, D.C. in return for Jefferson and Madison supporting his plan for the national government to pay states' debts.

Though the song title is repeated more than 30 times, Conine only signs that phrase a few times. Instead, with the help of her deaf coach, she interprets the song by signing how Burr wants to be influential while Jefferson, Hamilton and Madison are the influencers.

When Conine attended one of the first performances in Milwaukee of Hamilton, the actor portraying Burr was different than the one who played him during the Saturday ASL matinee. The first Burr actor was much more animated with a totally different energy, Conine noted, and she planned to use some of the first actor's mannerisms which "threw me a little bit on Saturday. We have to adjust because sometimes that happens with a long run and understudies are rotating in."

When the Marcus Center schedules ASL interpreters for performances, a group of seats is usually set aside in the area near where Smith and Conine — and this time, Rivera —stand for deaf patrons, said Heidi Lofy, vice president of experience and engagement. The facility also provides large print and Braille versions of playbills and audio description services for visually impaired audience members.

Smith and Conine "have been our 'go to' team for many years and we truly appreciate their commitment and the service they provide," Lofy said.

Dressed in black clothing so their hands can be easily seen, the interpreters come out on stage 10 minutes before the show starts to greet deaf and hard-of-hearing patrons, explain who is portraying which characters, and reveal name signs that will be used on second reference to characters. Names are usually finger spelled on first reference.

A name sign is a unique way to identify someone within the deaf culture without having to spell out their name. The names usually reflect the person's character and are often created by someone within the deaf community. Usually when meeting someone, people finger spell their names first, followed by their name sign.

The three interpreters tried looking up name signs for Hamilton characters, though one they saw on the Internet for Hamilton was the sign for pulling hair into a pony tail, said Rivera, which they decided wouldn't work because it would have taken too long.

They used the widely accepted name sign for Washington, "W" with the hand forming the sign next to their shoulder where a general would wear epaulets. Hamilton was "AW" and Burr was "B" over the heart.

Female name signs are often signed next to the interpreter's chin. Because Angelica and Eliza Schuyler are close sisters, their name signs were performed by forming "A" with the fingernail of the thumb tapping the right side of the chin and "E" with the knuckle of the index finger, also on the right side, explained Rivera.

Despite their many hours and weeks of preparation, all three said they were petrified before last Saturday's first ASL performance of "Hamilton" in Milwaukee. But once they got started, adrenaline kicked in and Miranda's witty, charming, beautiful words flowed through their fingers, hands and faces.

They are meeting this week to make minor adjustments for the next two ASL performances.

"It is nice to be able to do the same show three times," said Smith. "It's exhausting to think about doing it again, but the timing will definitely get better."