Transcripts of TerryGalloway

 We usually start one of these interviews by asking you to tell us just an early memory that you have with reading and writing. One of your first kind of memories of you as a reader or a writer. And it might even be something that your mother told you because it was before you even remember, but. 

I think the first memory that I have as a... about reading was when I was very little. I was maybe 2 or 3. Because my older sister, she was 7 years older than I am and she was a reader, a reader. So I remember I would read "Howdy-Doody" and "Tiger-Lily" comic books, and I couldn't read the language but the pictures, I loved the pictures. And I remember loving them... But I also remember wanting to write, because my older sister could write, and so she had a diary. And I remember getting pieces of paper and scribbling, you know just making anything to pretend that I was writing too. My father and my mother are just, they're readers, and neither one of them has, my mother didn't have a High School education, and my father didn't either until after he joined the military. But reading was very, very important. With my Grandfather too, people that you would think would be illiterate. My grand... my father's mother was the mother of 10 children, and they said that she used to read by lantern light when all of her kids were in bed. And that's she wanted that. So that's something in our family. But that's my first memory, of a "Howdy Doody" comic book and watching my sister write, and getting a pencil, and scribbling myself. I'm going to ask you really directly now about the impact of your hearing loss, of deafness, and how you see that that's connected in with any of your literacy learning, your use of reading and writing. In what two ways those things connect up for you. I think the way they connect up for me is that, the way I became deaf. Because I became deaf gradually, and I came from a family that not only were readers, they were all story tellers, and a lot of them were very musical. And so I grew up with a lust for sound, but also a lust for language. I wanted those words, they were very important for me. But at the same time, this is so funny that you're asking this. Because one of the things that plagued me when I was a child was knowing that my vocabulary could never be what my mind desired. I just couldn't hear. I couldn't get the words because I didn't know how they were pronounced. And my older sister when she was home, she left home very early in her life, maybe when she was 17 years old, she would correct my mispronunciations. Because I mispronounced words all the time. But there was something in me too, I could have just shut down, but I didn't mind being a fool. And so I'd mispronounce all over the place. Because mispronounced or not, I wanted those words, I wanted them in my soul, I wanted them in my brain, I wanted those words, I wanted those words. 

So in some ways that's my deafness, affected me in that it made it more difficult for me, I had to fight for language. I had to fight to get it, I had to say these words over and over again, I became obsessed with poetry. I memorized poem after poem after poem after poem so I could have that language right there. But also in some ways it protected me from... Well when we were in Germany there was radio, and it wasn't really there for me. You know, it was a social hour, but for me, I would read. I wanted to read, I wanted to be part of the language thing, and radio was part of it, television later became part of it. But part of that was gone for me, and so I could not be entirely a part of all of that social more. And so I think that's how my deafness affected me. In the memoir that you just wrote "Mean Little Deaf Queer", can you tell me are there stories in there now, that connect with reading and writing, with literacy? Are there stories in the memoir that connect with reading and writing and literacy? Well... Isn't that interesting? Yes, but, literacy maybe not so much writing, but literacy as an (...). The repetition of the story. The stories that we repeated again and again and again, all the old family history, all the old family myths. You know the stories about the foretelling, that people were dead and didn't do. Or who lived, who died, what they wore. All of those kinds of stories, those were patterns in our family, that my older sister, who is a writer, Gail Adams, she wrote a thing called "The Purchase of Water". And what she takes a lot of those family stories and she writes, you know saves things by writing them down. But they changed, and there's like a huge debate in the family about what story is the right story, who told the right story. But there were patterns, just like the wine dark sea you know? And it would start: "Christmas of 1923" or "The twins, Eva and Eva, who died within three months of each other, and lived to be 93 years old." The patterns that you could say one or two lines and you knew the story that was going to follow. You knew the story that was going to follow. So that in a way is about writing without... That's about literacy of a different sort. 

Ok, so then I want to ask about the writing of the memoir itself. Because you're a performance artist, and a theater person primarily. So the ways that you've always kind of told your story on the stage with your performance. So what made you want to write a memoir then. Why turn to writing? 

I love my family. And so I... This is really funny to me. Ok, when I was in, I was actually a recluse, when I was a younger woman. And I wrote poetry, and my older sister was scared to death that I was never going to leave home. That I lived in my parents in an upstairs bedroom in my parents home, and my mother literally, my parents literally had to move away so that I would get out of the house. I did not want to leave. I was a kind of a 23-something... I was in college I was doing all of these things, but I was a poet, that's what I did. That's what I was in Austin Texas, those are the people that I hung around with. I loved poets, you know, I loved language. Even though I love theater, I really didn't think I ever had that choice. I didn't think I had a choice, I'm deaf. And I was told all along the way there was not a choice. "Factory work make good job for deaf." That was the kind of thing that I heard when I was in High School, I was an A student. In college I heard the same thing "You're deaf, you can't be on stage". And I got on stage and I did Shakespeare. That's what opened in me, I loved performance, but what opened me is I love Shakespeare. I loved, and then I loved Falstaff in particular. I loved all those characters that Shakespeare created that were all ones who were getting thrown down flights of stairs and getting beaten up. I never like the princes you know, I never liked, I liked the characters. 

And so I loved Shakespeare's language. But then I started, but in an odd way the language, Shakespeare's language performance. I was very lucky that I got to perform with a German playwright named Heiner Miller, he was a the resident playwright of the Berliner ensemble. And so he wrote a thing called (...), it was about the Russian Revolution, it was redone to be about women in revolution. So I got involved because, in part because I was an admirer of Heiner Miller's work. And he wanted people who, remember because I was born in Germany. I was born in Berlin. So in a way theater was a way to get back to language. And theater was a way that if I memorized everybody's lines and my own, I could be right there in a minute. Because otherwise in every other conversation. Then particularly I was so excruciatingly self-conscious about communicating with people, that I had a very difficult time in one on one conversations. And like a lot of deaf I would monopolize. But then I was part of a conversation. And if they could cue me, and I could get my cue, we were conversing. That's what theater did for me. You know that's what theater did for me. And it was this kind of roundabout way. Now the reason I wanted to write, was that I had something to say that Shakespeare wasn't saying. And it was primarily when I was up in New York, and I was looking when I did political theater. I helped start a theater in Austin, it was a political theater it was queer, it was feminist, it was funny. We did lots of things, literary stuff. I wrote, I got to actually write original stuff. Heiner Miller was one of the ones responsible for that. Because he was saying "Forget Shakespeare, you love Shakespeare, that's wonderful. You'll never be Shakespeare but don't you have a voice? Don't you have something to say? You're a queer deaf woman, where are the queer deaf people in Shakespeare?" And I thought well, you know, I know one person, many people... So in a way it was like theater was about a way of recapturing the language again. 

And so when I was doing this stuff about my own life that out all night and (...), it was because I had nothing else to work from. I had myself, my body and my own experiences. And because of my deafness and my queerness and my poverty. Because I was poor as shit, I had something to say, and I wanted to say it. And I didn't... I wanted to say it. So humiliating or not I did what every performance artist worth their soul did, I got up there and I stood by it. And I used my body and I used the funny comic things that I got, and I do Shakespeare. Because I wanted to say something during a time, I remember it had been so political and then and all of a sudden it was like (guttural noise). There was no one doing anything political. And politics to me is so personal. I hated Reagan, he decimated social programs that saved the likes of me and so many of my friends with their mental problems were out on the streets. And I couldn't see anybody talking about this, except the performance artists who were putting their own bodies out there on the line, and saying "This is me, this isn't some abstract" So that's why I did it. And it was excruciating, it was difficult. But then the stories, and so there's my story and my family stories, I always loved them. It starts with the family stories because this kind of thing, the precariousness of life, the fear in life, that's been there all the time. And also because my family, my mother doesn't think she's worth shit. And her family, they came from poor, so did my dad. Poor as hell. The hardest thing, and I thought, "I love these stories." And I want to do it so other people... I didn't have children, no child was going to listen to me. But I remember sitting at the table and watching, and wanting to hear those stories. They meant something to me, they were meaningful. And I wanted to make those stories that I loved so much, and the people that I adored, I wanted to make them meaningful. And I didn't understand why somebody with a lot of money or somebody with a lot of prestige or somebody, a General, or you know a President, or a movie star, why the hell were their lives more valuable than the lives of my mother, my grandfather, my aunt, my dad? I didn't see it, I wanted to make that claim. 

So it wasn't just for me, it was for my whole family. So I kind of, I walk away from that hearing that you say that the memoir, the writing is not even so much for me, it's really about also the other people's stories for other people. Yeah, and I had a hard time, I could write the first part of it, but when I was writing the second part I thought "I don't know whether I have anything to write about." And then my friends who were in these actual lives workshops because there were a lot of people with different kinds of disabilities. And one of the things I've been saying at all of these workshops, "Your stories are great, they're fascinating. They mean something." And they were saying "And yours are not?" And they said if anybody is likely to tell this kind of thing, it's going to be. I have two stories, you know how to do this, so get to work and do it. And so that was a little, you know, I thought "Come on guys, you're just being lazy too (laughter)." I mean any one of them could've written about... But I just worked hard at it, you know. In the process of doing theater, in the groups that you've worked with like the actual lives, projects, Esther's Follies, right? Mickey Foust, Wild Cafe. In the process of writing, how does writing work in those, how does writing work in the theater spaces that you work in? Are things written and then performed? Or does the... I'm just wondering where and how writing and reading comes into the performance of theater work that you do. Well for all of these yeah, because for all of them, like Esther's. We used to do literary parodies, it's all original, it was original theater. We would do... This is what made it so interesting because otherwise it would have just been another little theater. But what made it unique is that the people in the community were writing their own things. And a lot of us, we were writing from very literary standpoint. We did wonderful literary parodies, we did favorite stories from your childhood theater. We would do movie parodies, we had you know, a lot of us came from a text based background. And so, so when we were writing we were using these techniques. And we were discovering how to write even as we were doing it. That was from Esther's Follies. And from Esther's, that's actually how I started doing the one person shows. Because I would take poems, poems that I had written, skits and things that I had created, stories that were being told. There were... Vaudeville, new vaudeville, bad jokes, their own little literary, that's their own little literary style and genre as a bad joke. It's a wonderful thing. So that's why, for me the text based, particularly for Esther's. But it was also for actual lives in the Mickey Foust club. For instance, like in actual lives, you take people... When you are working with people with disabilities, all kinds of disabilities, and you ask them "Write about your disability. Write about, you know, your powerful moments in disability." And then you get a paragraph or two, and everyone thinks I have to boo-hoo-hoo, and then everybody laughs. You know, it's fun, because we're all in there, we all know the situation. But also we were able to take a paragraph and change that by using performance techniques rather than straight theater techniques. Performance techniques which anything goes, you translate it for theater. But it's still text based, but it's all original. So Esther's Follies is original, with original community writing. We would have times where we would get together and we would drink and we would write. And it was just like a kind of thing you would see on television in sit-com writing, where they say "You all get together and..." We would be each other's audience. We were sitting around a kitchen table the same way my family had done, all the time elaborating, giving each other the stories, amusing each other. It was very much a family kind of thing. 

One of the threads in your story that in a way you just came back to, I kept, you mentioned radio and TV? Radio and TV. Theater, and story-telling in a family setting, which I think of as very performative. I mean, you're doing it in person, not like radio stories where you're just hearing it. And I'm curious about how those different media have played into your sense of yourself as a storyteller. Because it sounds as if though you came back to performance, which is the closest I can imagine to family story-telling, where we gesture and we make faces and we know how to pause and wait for the right relative to laugh. 

Yeah, it, absolutely. I mean that, it's family, actually for me doing performance for me is a way of being among family again. That is how I... When it didn't feel that way, I retired from it. When I started fearing the audiences, not liking them, not liking my relationship with that. I stopped, because I thought "What's the point in this?" You know, what's the point in this? What about technology, the use of any kinds of technology that you use often, frequently, that are part of your reading and writing practices in the past. But also now. In what ways have you used technology as part of literacy? Oh well heck, more and more and more. Because as I know... First of all: Technology, I love it, I'm a firm believer in it and it saved my life. Because I used to be so much more isolated. Like when I was living in New York I couldn't use a phone, they didn't have deaf relay then, they didn't have computers they didn't have... When I was gone I was gone. And the rest of the world didn't really exist, it was like being a pioneer, you write. You know, you write... So for me the idea that I can converse. It's fantastic to me. So I write all the time, I love to write e-mails, it's like writing little mini-letters, it's the most wonderful thing. I've improved my writing skills, but also it's improved my connection, and my connectivity, with other people, with groups, with my family. But with the world too, you know. I just, I adored that. And I remember the very first Macintosh I ever had. I'd went out, I had this fellowship called the (...) fellowship. And at the time they paid a ton of money, it was like 6 or 7 thousand bucks for like a couple of months, right? You didn't have to do anything, you lived out of the ranch, and you didn't have to do anything. Well I bought a computer (laughter). Thought so, somehow I could see, What? Texas, using a Texas accent. Were you using a Texas accent right now? Really? That's too cool! (Laughter). I saw the difference too. (Laughter) It's still, it's residual. It's residual. That's how... So I was at the (...) and all of a sudden... I'm becoming self-conscious, I thought wow that's... (Loud laughter). 

And so I was at the (...) and Donna, my sweetheart with whom I've been with three years. Who rather is this technology guy right? He had one of the first Macs, it was a programmer all of a sudden, these machines are huge. But, and I thought this is amazing, because no white out. No such thing as error. And the way that you could do it, how wonderfully it could mimicked, or could mimic the working of your own brain. You know that, you look at it and then put it together and I loved it, I was in love with it from the very beginning. And I've had a computer ever since. That was in like 1981, something, that's not that early on, but that's relatively early on. It freed me. And then when you had... Now I have a cell phone with text messaging. For me travelling used to be so fraught, because if anything happened I had no way of getting ahold of, and it was always the physical and always had to be somebody who was there. Well this way people could now exist for me in the abstractest realm. And it can be so lovely, it's so lovely. So I'm a firm believer in that. I remember it just the ease with which you could create, and then of course with which it all could be lost (laughter). (More laughter) Do you use technology now? In any way in the writing or creating of performances or video performance? I mean how is it now part of your work? Oh well, personally I am kind of an old school when it comes to a performance because I don't really do that anymore, I'm doing my older shows. But that is like 30 years old or something like that, that's an old, one of those very first ones. When I'm creating with my group, we do video, but one of the things that we found out about technology that was wonderful. There are about 40% of the people in the Mickey Foust club, in actual life that's a workshop, there are different workshops that are both in Texas and in Florida. And at Mickey Foust club it's a mixed group. It's a mixed ability group, but about 40% of our people have disabilities or are legally defined as disabled. 

Some of our people who are disabled have progressive disability. And one of the things we found out, there's a woman named Mary-Ann Ward, and she had neurofibromatosis, and so tumors grew all up along her spine. And so she became progressively... And by the end she wasn't able to, really to move. But she was one of our most wonderul writers, she was so funny. She was onstage until she couldn't move anymore. She, you know, we used her chair as a tank. (Laughter). She was marvelous, right? What was so marvelous about this, this kind of technology, we could go to her. And it wasn't a big huge idea, taking the cameras and setting up the lights. It could be like this. You're in front her bed and then there she is. So she's not left out. And so nobody has to be left out. The ease with which it can happen. And we use it that way. So we would go to some of our people who can't be a part of this, and we'd make them part of our videos. We make them part of our documentation. We do it on YouTube, that kind of thing. Also like for backgrounds and for shots we're using all of the, you know what I'm talking about, powerpoint and all of that kind of thing. We're using that, but also it's a great way to caption. So we're a very poor theater. I mean we, we make little or none of us makes any money, all of our money goes back into the space, putting up ramps, making it as accessible as we can and figuring out technology. So we're a really poor theater, and we're one of the few theaters at that time, everything we do is captioned. We can't always afford a signer, because they're just prohibitively expensive, but we'll caption it. So the technology is now coming too where we can get audio description, and that's another one that's so hard. Because you have to have somebody who knows how to do it, and then they're so damn pricey. 

So anyways I'm a big huge gung-ho fan of technology. (Laughter). Is anyone using then, in the story about what's her name, Marian I don't understand, what? Marian, Marian Wood? Mary-Ann Ward, yes. That, her story made me think about voice recognition software too. Voice recognition software. So that people who can't type, they can still compose text. And I've used that some for captioning as well, just to speed up the captioning. How I'll listen to the sound and speak it into a voice recognition software to get the typing done. Have you used that at all? Well I haven't used it but you know what's interesting is that there are two of my dear friends who have CP, Cerebral Palsy, and we're able to talk really well, like with instant chat. But the minute we get together it's like we're flummoxed because I can't read their lips (laughter). Their speech is very difficult, and I'm going "I just don't get it" So we talked about voice recognition software, but we're not sure how that works for us. You know, because voice recognition software, if they were to speak it in, it'll come up as a voice for them, but I can't hear that voice. So we're trying, we were thinking, "Well is there a thing where the voice recognition software..." Where also too because sometimes it works better if you're not original. If you speak in cliches it's going to recognize you, you're going to get the cliches. You know "Have a nice day!" You know, that's going to be there. But if you're saying something like "I'm going to eat your brains!" Or something like that, which my friend Rand did, it's going to get skewed. So it's like the originality of thought, and the originality of language sometimes precludes the idea of that. So we've been trying to figure that out. We have a computer, but Rand can't use a computer very easily. And so he writes in a longhand, in cursive but that is also difficult for him. So we're trying to figure this out. And we actually all hope that the technology will present itself. That's why I hope NASA program continues. Because we know most great technological things have come from NASA. These, (laughter). (More laughter). Do you have any other questions? 

No, I covered a lot of ground. I just have one other question that we often ask people at the end of an interview. Just if they have anything in particular they would like to say, if they could address young people. If they could address what? Young people. About? Young, young people. Oh, young kids? About literacy? Yeah. 

Well. I don't know. Because I work with kids who are you know, younger kids. When we're doing... Ok, well you've been told this a million times. Don't get intimidated, by anyone who is supposedly great or the master or anything of the sort. Never allow that. And one of the things I will say is that, when I've been teaching workshops and I go... I'm not sure how young you're talking about, but even when they're younger. And if they have any kind of grasp about language, it doesn't matter what the background is. I was doing a workshop with these kids from, who come from, they come from a group home right? And some of them are like 12 and 13 years old. And they're thinking, well, "I don't have anything really to say, I have nothing that has any power, I have nothing that can change the world." And I think that's bullshit. Because always, always, something's said. And something is said that is original and new. And something is said that somebody hasn't said before. Or that maybe it needs repeating. And so never forget that, maybe it needs repeating. And don't I know you're not letting go of the language, because the technology is all about language. Kindle, and instant text, and twittering. It's chat, it's language, it's talk. In whatever form that it is, and use it well. Thank you. Why thank you, that was so fun. Thank you, I chatter on a little bit too much, you'll have to forgive me.