Flying Words to Perform at NTID

From: NTID - Jan 10, 2005

FLYING WORDS TO PERFORM AT NTID

Award winning show combines ASL and poetry

ROCHESTER, N.Y., Jan. 10—The widely known Flying Words Project will perform a free show at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 29, in the Robert F. Panara Theater, located in the Lyndon Baines Johnson building of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, a college of Rochester Institute of Technology.

Imagine watching a leaf floating into water, propelling peaceful ripples across the stream. Through American Sign Language and pantomime, deaf artist Peter Cook brings the words of poetry to life, using only his body and hands. His counterpart, Kenny Lerner, a hearing faculty member at NTID, uses words, sound effects, and silence to interpret what Cook signs.

For some 20 years, Cook, of Chicago, Ill., and Lerner, of Geneseo, N.Y., have been committed to expressing poetry through ASL and body movement. Both entertaining and educational, The Flying Words Project's emphasis on imagery through hand movements has drawn extensive acclaim, earning the Critic's Choice award in the Chicago Reader, the Drama-louge magazine and the Village Voice.

This one-time only performance is co-sponsored by NTID's English Department, Liberal Arts Support, Student Life Team, the Department of Cultural and Creative Studies, and the Office of the Vice President and Dean.

For more information, e-mail mnldis@rit.edu or call 585-243-9413 (Voice/TTY).

The first and largest technological college in the world for deaf and hard-of-hearing students, NTID, one of eight colleges of RIT, offers educational programs and access and support services to the 1,100 deaf and hard-of-hearing students from around the world who study, live, and socialize with 14,400 hearing students on RIT's Rochester, N.Y., campus.

Web address: http://www.rit.edu/NTID