Company History
PLEASE NOTE: ATOD IS NOT CURRENTLY TOURING OR PRESENTING PRODUCTIONS
ATOD originated in the early 1970s when Adam Salzer, Nola Colefax (ATOD’s current patron) and a group of dedicated and enthusiastic Deaf people set about entertaining the Deaf community and giving an opportunity for Deaf people to express themselves through performance. The focus was to create a theatre FOR the Deaf.
In 1979, with backing from the Australia Council and the Elizabethan Theatre Trust, Theatre of the Deaf was launched as a professional company with our founding Deaf acting troupe consisting of Nola Colefax, David London and Colin Allen. The focus changed to become a theatre OF the Deaf, catering for both hearing and Deaf audiences.
The 1980s were an exciting decade for the Theatre of the Deaf. The company focused on performing classics – from Shakespeare, Beckett, Brecht to Tennessee Williams – in sign language supported by voice-over interpreting from the wings, or by hearing actors on stage, and started to give performances in primary and high schools around Australia. This gave rise to the Theatre in Schools Program, which is now an established and eagerly anticipated fixture on the schools calendar.
Towards the end of the 1980s, the Theatre of the Deaf appointed its first professional Deaf Artistic Director, under whose direction it worked hard to create a new Deaf theatre method, with defined and articulated techniques such as Visual Vernacular. This innovative era saw the company develop an overall style which was to become its trademark: universally-understood visual theatre.
Internationally, the company performed, to critical acclaim, at the World Congress of the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) in 1991 in Japan and again in 1995 in Austria. Both events attracted well over 2,000 people. In 1994 the company toured to New Zealand and performed with the Singapore Theatre of the Deaf at the Singapore Fringe Festival.
Having toured to every state and territory in Australia and internationally to the USA, Japan, New Zealand, Austria and Singapore, it was fitting that the company was renamed Australian Theatre of the Deaf in 1995.
The company continued to strengthen its presence in the Asia Pacific region in 2000 by collaborating with the Hong Kong Deaf Theatre Company and a 6-week performance engagement.
In 2010 the Australian Theatre of the Deaf (ATOD) joined forces with Arts Access Victoria, where it has come under the auspices of the Deaf Arts Network (DAN).
To date, and in addition to the above, ATOD’s significant achievements include:
- Devising and directing school productions which tour nationally (at least three shows per year since 1979)
- Production of the first Australian Deaf musical, The Sign of the Phantom (1995)
- Performance of the bi-lingual play, Deaf and Gay, at the Sydney Mardi Gras Festival (1999)
- Performance of a Deaf cabaret show, Dislabelled at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival (2002)
- Three month Australian tour of Dislabelled (2004)
- Production of the original production There and Back at Sidetrack Theatre (2005)
- Commissioning and staging of The Cat Lady of Bexley, a new work written and performed by Sofya Gollan and directed by Caroline Conlon (2006)
- Adelaide Fringe Festival (Theatre in Schools Program, 2008)
- National Multicultural Arts Festival (Theatre in Schools Program, 2008)
- High Beam Festival (Theatre in Schools Program, 2008)
- Establishment of the annual National Drama Camp for Deaf young people (2008).
- Staging of the new physical theatre work The Wild Boys directed and created by Caroline Conlon starring local and international Deaf artists (2008)
