Bernard Bragg, a trailblazer for deaf performers who in 1967 became a founder of the National Theater of the Deaf in Connecticut, died on Oct. 29 in Los Angeles. He was 90.

The actress Marlee Matlin, a longtime friend, confirmed his death.

Mr. Bragg, who was born deaf to deaf parents, began carving out a performing career in the late 1950s after studying with the mime Marcel Marceau. He appeared at clubs in the San Francisco area like the hungry i, working in a style of his own invention he called sign mime, which combined elements of American Sign Language with the tools of mime.

In the mid-1960s he joined up with Edna Simon Levine, a psychologist who worked with the deaf and for some time had been thinking about a professional company of deaf actors, and David Hays, a set and lighting designer. Together they formed the National Theater of the Deaf, which gave its first public performance in 1967 at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.

The company won a special Tony Award in 1977.

Mr. Bragg performed with it for 10 years, including in several Broadway shows, before becoming a visiting professor at his alma mater, Gallaudet University in Washington, which serves deaf and hard-of-hearing students. A 1979 article in The Washington Post called him “the man who invented theater as a professional career for the deaf.”