Bullets Falling Upon Deaf Ears: A Glimpse Behind the Curtain of Private Jones
An Interview with Private Jones Playwright Marshall Pailet
by Jackson Lanzer
When picturing World War I, scenes of carnage come to mind: artillery shells bombarding trenches, men gasping under the air of mustard gas, and the mechanical hum of the world’s first tanks roaring across no man’s land, impenetrable iron beasts. Yet, amidst this chaos, all Private Jones heard was silence.
Playwright Marshall Pailet was captivated by Private Jones’ story and dreamed for many years of telling a First World War story through a unique lens—the true story of Private Jones, a deaf, Welsh sniper. Melding dramatic moments with comedy, music, and innovative sound design, Private Jones seeks to replicate Jones’ experience theatrically for both the hearing and hard-of-hearing audience.
I reached out to Marshall just a week before the premiere on February 6th at the Signature Theatre. When Marshall answered the phone, his passion for Private Jones emanated from the energetic rhythm of his voice. Over the following thirty minutes, he showed how he collaborated with a team of deaf and hard-of-hearing actors and creatives to produce a show that captures the essence of Private Jones’ war.
How did you discover Private Gomer Jones’ story, and what inspired you to adapt it into a musical?
I wanted to write a World War piece and a trench warfare story. I wanted it to be from one soldier's perspective, and I wanted that perspective to be unique in some way. Knowing that I also wanted to direct it, I wanted a story that necessitated interesting staging in some way, where the content and the form were aligned.
One day, I stumbled upon this article about deaf war stories from the British Isles during World War I. And there were a couple of sentences about this soldier named Gomer Jones, who, according to this article, was Welsh, a sharpshooter, well-liked, and indistinguishable from his fellow soldiers on the battlefield. I was like, “That's super interesting! And how did that work?” As I researched, I found that you weren't allowed to be deaf and serve on the front lines in World War I in England, so how would that have happened? And how can you theatricalize the experience of a war scene when the character can't hear the bullets or can't hear the explosions? That was the jumping-off point, and then my brain just kind of started exploding with theatrical ideas.
Was there a reason you decided to tell a deaf story, and/or did you have any connection to the deaf community prior to this show?
It was definitely a story first for me. I had seen several productions with deaf performers and ASL (American Sign Language) woven into the show that used ASL to tell their story. I was a fan of that style of theater.
But to answer your question, no, I didn't have a relationship with the deaf community before I started working on this. I do now. I’ve worked with enough artists in enough iterations of this show, and I would say that it's a community in which I spend a lot of time.
What has been the response from the deaf and hard-of-hearing community so far?
It’s good so far, but we haven't had a lot of exposure to the public. We had a workshop production at Good Speed, a theater in Connecticut. Many of the cast members and creative team members from that workshop are here a Signature, but this is the world premiere.
This show isn't just for a hearing audience. It's for a hearing audience, a deaf audience, and a hard-of-hearing audience. We have to make sure that it's fully accessible. Just in terms of the dialogue, the whole show is captioned. Every performance of every show and every word is captioned on stage. We have open captions, which are at the sides of the stage, and dynamic captions, which are in the center of the stage. We also have ASL-interpreted performances, where we have ASL interpreters who stand between the audience and the stage, and we interpret the whole show. So we have lots of different accessibility options. So it's extremely important to us that this is a show that's accessible for the hearing and the deaf community.
How does working with a team of deaf and hard-of-hearing cast members and creatives influence how the story is told?
The difference is there's a language barrier. But the language barrier is surmountable, and we always have interpreters in the room. So everything that's said in the room, both in English and ASL, goes through an interpreter. However, the language barrier is overcomable; you just have to learn ASL. At this point, I, a bunch of the creative team members, and the cast who have worked on the development of the show before had a lot of exposure to ASL and took ASL classes. So, by the time we got to Signature, I think we're all pretty good at it. But we have a fantastic interpreter team that is both backstage, in the rehearsal room, and in the house to ensure that everything being spoken is accessible. Everyone in the company does everything on the show. It's not like there's a hearing company and a deaf company; everyone does every scene, everyone dances, everyone's in every song. And so part of the choreography involves giving some of the cast members visual cues. But the way that we've designed it is everything that's happening on the stage, no matter what the language, everyone in the audience understands what's going on at all times.
How exactly do you create the soundscape that reflects the deaf experience?
The idea is that as we grow up, we have emotional relationships with sounds, smells, and things we experienced as a child. And so we're creating this emotional relationship with sound. So the idea is that sound comes back in moments when he's remembering a feeling and we bring back the sound. But we also play around with silence. He's a character who reads lips because he's lost his hearing recently. So we hear what he sees spoken. What he sees spoken, we hear. What he doesn’t see, we don’t. We play around with what he's hearing and what the audience is hearing, as well as, moments of silence and moments of fullness, and it's all meant to visually and orally create the emotional experience of the character.
Performances for Private Jones at the Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Avenue, Arlington, Virginia, have been extended through March 17, 2024. Running time is approximately two hours and 30 minutes, including one 15-minute intermission. Tickets are available at https://www.sigtheatre.org/plan-your-visit/ #SigPvtJones
Jackson Lanzer is a student at George Washington University from Los Angeles studying international affairs and journalism. He is a staff writer for the GW Hatchet, GW’s student-run newspaper, and a writer for District Debrief, a sketch comedy show produced by GW-TV.