Getty Images / Ben Montgomery“Every day, as deaf, you remember your deafness,” said William Mager, writer of the new BBC thriller meeting.
These reminders may go and have to face medical meetings without an interpreter available to be excluded from important decisions concerning your own life, he said.
“All these things add up over time and generate a feeling of injustice,” says Mager, adding this artist Christine Sun Kim Describes this feeling as a “deaf rage”.
It is a feeling partly carried by the frustration and isolation of life in a world centered on hearing.
This rage, alongside a love of thrillers from the 70s, is what inspired Mager’s new drama.
The bilingual thriller presents both the British sign language (BSL), with subtitles and the English spoken. The majority of actors in reunion are deaf or use BSL in their roles.
The four -part series, producers of adolescence, tells the story of Daniel Brennan (Matthew Gurney), a deaf man in a revenge trip after spending a decade in prison.
Mager, a fan of thrillers from the 70s for life, says he wanted to put his own “twist” on films like Get Carter and the outfit (which present “intimidating men in cool clothes” on a revenge mission) by also based on the deaf experience.
“Reunion begins like these classic thrillers, but finds itself in a very different place,” said the writer.
While the main character Brennan hunts a man known only under the name of Monroe, viewers become aware of a painful secret that he hid and the difficulties he faces to find justice in a world centered on hearing.
The guardian Called the performance of the “Exceptional” program and the change between the signed language and the spoken language “totally without seam”, while the independent said retirement is “in many ways, a revolutionary spectacle”.
In the end, Mager says he wanted to tackle problems specific to the deaf program of the program, as well as to offer opportunities to deaf creatives.
“ Unfortunately, it is always reality ”
Mager says that communication is a central theme of the meeting and that the drama shows how each character is struggling with.
A key example is a scene where Brennan’s daughter, Carly, must transmit painful information to his mother and father who would generally be relayed by professionals, due to a lack of performers.
“Unfortunately, this is still reality today,” said Mager, explaining that his wife recently experienced this, having to interpret for his mother during an appointment in the hospital, because an interpreter had not been reserved.
Mager says it shows how deaf people often have to count on someone else who expresses them to be understood.
“It can be difficult for a deaf person to give up this control over what he says to someone else,” he said.
BBC / Warp / Matt Squire moviesAnother thing that Mager wanted to attract attention was the literacy rates in deaf children.
A key point of the intrigue in the reunion is that Brennan is not able to read or write in English who, coupled with the failure of the prison to reserve interpreters, means that it lacks important letters of his daughter and does not have the details of his explained case.
“Deaf children are often lagging behind their counterparts hearing in education, in particular (in) reading and writing,” explains Mager.
The writer adds that, in his opinion, this is due in part to the deprivation of language, resulting from the deaf child who will not have access to the language with which they are most comfortable from an early age.
According to Simon Want, from the National Deaf Children’s Society, many deaf children are confronted with obstacles to access to a good education.
BBC / Warp / Matt Squire movies‘I hope this door will remain open’
Mager says that it was a “joy” to see the actors both deaf and hear giving life to his scenario.
On the set, the first deputy director of Deaf, Sam Arnold, worked with the hearing of the first deputy director Alex Szygowski to relay the instructions to the distribution and the team.
And hearing actors Anne-Marie Duff and Lara Peake learned to sign their roles.
“They are all fantastic. My favorite thing about Reunion was to see the real enthusiasm and the (DE) distribution and the team (of),” explains Mager.
The writer adds that he hopes that the series “will open a door” for deaf creatives at the same time and behind the camera.
“I hope the door will remain open long enough for more people to cross it and find creative and fulfilling careers,” he said.
