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 David
Hays still loves the Theatre. A. VINCENT SCARANO |
David Hays '52 corrects people when they refer to the organization that he founded 30 years ago as the National Theatre for the Deaf. "It isn't for the Deaf," he says, "It's of the Deaf." Point taken. The National Theatre of the Deaf plays primarily to hearing audiences; it has hearing actors, though only a few; and David Hays had no deaf acquaintances until he founded what many agree has become one of the most powerful agents of social change in deaf history. "I was attracted to deaf theater [which combines both spoken and signed language] as an art form, one of the only new theatrical forms to emerge in the last quarter century," he says. "Its social significance is wonderful, but our first goal has always been to produce great theater."
Sadly, lofty artistic ideals and a historic place in the political life of the deaf can't protect against less elevated motives. Four years ago, the company discovered that its executive director, Charles Roper, had misused federal grant funds for personal expenses. In February of this year, he pleaded guilty to embezzlement of $105,000 from the organization, and was sentenced, in May, to a year and a day in jail. The charge, Hays says, was limited only to the federal funds that were misappropriated, but "much of the money was the Theatre's own"--Hays thinks as much as $425,000. Because the troupe remains financially shaken, Hays has moved from his original position as artistic director to administration and fundraising.
"This isn't the job I most wanted," he acknowledges, "but it must be done." Hays says it is vendors' goodwill and patience that has allowed the Theatre to continue operating--never missing a performance--while paying off debts. The company is now completing its tour, primarily at colleges throughout the southern United States, of an original production of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, a production that not only celebrates the Theatre's thirtieth year in existence but is also their first tour since the resolution of the Roper case. Hays and his company are now able to get back to the work they originally set out to do, and to achieve even more far-reaching ambitions: "We will be doing a workshop in Antarctica," he says proudly. "We'll be the first American theatrical company to have worked on all seven continents."
~ Daniel Delgado