Internationally acclaimed Deaf actor, playwright, and director Bernard Bragg has committed $100,000 to NTID, to establish the Bernard Bragg Deaf Theatre, Signed Arts, and Deaf Cinema Endowment Fund.
The fund will support scholarships, training, workshops, and lectures related to Deaf theater and cinema for deaf and hard-of-hearing students interested in the performing arts.
Bragg, 77, a former artist-in-residence at NTID, began acting in the 1950s as a student at Gallaudet College and then studied in Paris with legendary mime Marcel Marceau. He spent years performing as a traditional mime artist throughout the United States before helping found the National Theatre of the Deaf in 1967. He has been teaching ASL and Deaf Theater courses and directing plays at California State University at Northridge since 1998. (He has also served as artist-in-residence at Gallaudet University and the Russian Theatre of Mimicry and Gesture. Gallaudet and CSUN have received similar generous theater-arts endowments from Bragg.)
Among his many honors is an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Gallaudet University. In 2001, he received a Special Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Federation of the Deaf “for his commitment, dedication and leadership in the deaf theatre world and his encouragement to deaf actors everywhere.”
In announcing his gift to NTID, Bragg said, “I wish to see deaf people in theatre and film, around the world, continue to explore and enhance the quality of their creative works. Deaf theatre and film groups have made significant and impressive contributions not only to their own deaf communities, but also to the general culture of the greater societies in which they live. Recognition of their extraordinary talents also helps to increase respect and empowerment.”
Bragg will revisit NTID this fall, when students will perform his play, Tales from a Clubroom, in his honor.
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