One new Kingston show explores deaf artistry in a clever homage to classic theatre.
Theatre Kingston’s brand-new production Hands in Her Pockets runs from Mar. 12 to 21. at the Kingston Grand Theatre. Written and directed by Rosemary Doyle, the play re-imagines Marie Jones’ Stones in His Pockets (1996) as a modern tale of two deaf actors navigating Hollywood’s biases and ruthless working environment.
Doyle originally considered directing Stones in His Pockets because it tells the story of two actors working as extras in a film shot in Ireland. “I was looking for a piece that would be good for the two actors that I wanted,” Doyle said in an interview with The Journal, referencing Hands in Her Pockets’ lead actors Elizabeth Morris and Hayley Hudson, who’re both members of the deaf community.
As she explored the script, Doyle realized it wasn’t the right fit for the actors she had in mind—not to mention Stones in His Pockets explores the unique relationship between American filmmakers and Irish locals. So, drawing on her background as an award-winning playwright, Doyle crafted a new narrative, bringing her characters into the modern-day film industry.
The title itself references the changes Doyle made to the original story. “If you take a deaf person, and make them put their hands in their pockets, you’re silencing them,” Doyle explained. “It’s about the silencing of deaf artists in the artistic community.”
Instead of differences in Irish versus American society, Doyle’s play explores the treatment of deaf actors in Hollywood. “One of the things I did was build the lead of my show, in my pretend film, as playing a deaf character, even though they’re not [deaf],” Doyle explained. Morris and Hudson play deaf extras acting alongside a non-deaf lead, creating a sense of ‘What’s going on here?’” Doyle said.
In her experience, Doyle found other shows featuring deaf performers cast them in small roles, or in embodied physical roles she describes as “very clown based, appealing to a hearing audience.”
“I wasn’t interested in doing a play like that at all,” Doyle said.
Instead, Hands in Her Pockets frontlines the experiences of its actors, casting a hearing actor (Lauren Lafayette-Brooks) to play all other roles aside from the leads. As Morris and Hudson were pulled away for a week to perform with their own theatre company, Deaf Spirit, Doyle found herself rehearsing in different chunks with her hearing and non-hearing actors, as well as a week with everyone together.
“It works perfectly,” Doyle said, crediting her unique writing of the play based on the miscommunication between deaf and hearing characters. “It’s based on a film, and I’m rehearsing it like you would a film.”
But rehearsals for Hands in Her Pockets were certainly unique. Doyle’s been studying American Sign Language (ASL) since August 2025 to prepare for the project. The crew of Hands in Her Pockets also worked with a translator on set, a process Doyle described as “seamless.”
For Doyle, however, the show is largely business as usual. When she asked Stage Manager Will Smith-Blythe whether she was directing any differently than usual, he told her no. “Which makes sense, because I’m directing actors!” Doyle said with a smile. “Why should it be any different than how I usually direct actors?”
Writing in ASL requires some adaptation. “There’s been little finesses to the stuff I’ve written,” Doyle said. In ASL, she omits words like “so” and “just.” More specifically, some terms present differently in English than ASL.
For example, in English, Doyle wrote the line, “I let the white lady dance me away,” about drug use. The closest translation she could find in ASL was “drug angel.” In the interview, Doyle expresses the term in ASL, demonstrating why the English phrase doesn’t work. Laughing, she said, “I don’t think you can write this down.”
That’s the challenging, singular nature of Hands in Her Pockets, asking audiences to reconsider their notions of communication and their relationships to language.
“Normally I don’t think ASL is usually as funny as I’ve pushed it to [in this show],” Doyle said. “It’s tricky to do sarcasm in ASL. But we’ve cracked that nut.”
Hands in Her Pockets is currently showing until Mar. 21.
Tags
Hands in Her Pockets, Play, Rosemary Doyle, The Grand Theatre, Theatre, Theatre Kingston
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