Program
Mira Zuckermann: Building a Theatre
Talk
Mira Zuckermann
120min
Presentation Language: International Sign
Interpretation and Transcription: Japanese Sign Language, Japanese (Spoken/Text), English (Spoken/Text)
120min
Presentation Language: International Sign
Interpretation and Transcription: Japanese Sign Language, Japanese (Spoken/Text), English (Spoken/Text)
Supported by the Norwegian government, "Teater Manu" is a public theatre for the Deaf. How did Teater Manu become the internationally recognized Deaf theatre we know today? 30 years ago, Teater Manu did not exist, but there were many Deaf actors with a passion for theatre. Mira tells the story of how the theatre was built, the battles they had to endure, and the goals they achieved together with the Norwegian Deaf Association. Today, Teater Manu is an award-winning theatre with a history full of comedy, chaos, failures and successes. It is proof that if you have a dream—and invest everything you have—you can reach your goal.
Mira Zuckermann
Theatre Director / Creative Director of Teater Manu, 2001–2020
After her 1982 breakthrough role as Sarah Norman in "Children of a Lesser God", Mira went on to build Teater Manu, Norway’s sole professional signal language theatre. Established in 2001, Teater Manu grew exponentially in both funding and performances over the 20 years that Mira was the creative director. Teater Manu has been nominated for and awarded multiple prestigious theatre awards, including Performance of the Year for "I Was Fritz Moen", their 2011 play detailing the story a deaf man wrongfully convicted of two murders in Norway in the 70s. In 2018, Teater Manu toured "Crying Hands", a unique documentary drama investigating the persecution of disabled people by Nazi Germany.
After her 1982 breakthrough role as Sarah Norman in "Children of a Lesser God", Mira went on to build Teater Manu, Norway’s sole professional signal language theatre. Established in 2001, Teater Manu grew exponentially in both funding and performances over the 20 years that Mira was the creative director. Teater Manu has been nominated for and awarded multiple prestigious theatre awards, including Performance of the Year for "I Was Fritz Moen", their 2011 play detailing the story a deaf man wrongfully convicted of two murders in Norway in the 70s. In 2018, Teater Manu toured "Crying Hands", a unique documentary drama investigating the persecution of disabled people by Nazi Germany.
CRYING HANDS
Teater Manu’s critically acclaimed docudrama "Crying Hands" details the experience of deaf and disabled people leading up to and during WWII. A project that spanned decades, Teater Manu continually worked to collect video interviews from survivors, stitching their stories together into a narrative that shows the audience how inhumane eugenics programs were devised and developed into brutal medical experiments. "Crying Hands" has toured Norway and North America, and was made into a film in collaboration with NRK (Norwegian National Broadcasting).
