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Michael Schwartz’s recent vlog aroused people’s curiosity about who he was. In addition to the vlog’s comments, I received numerous e-mails inquiring about Schwartz, the law professor in New York. I forwarded the post to Dr. Bragg and mentioned that I received a good and abundant response. It was not before long that he replied:
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Tayler,
What a great cascade of comments on Michael Schwartz’s vlog! You may be interested to know that there is a story of his life succinctly told in my autobiography, “Lessons in Laughter,” pp. 179-185. He is truly a role model of an orally-trained deaf person who became adjusted emotionally, intellectually, culturally with his true identity. At the age of twenty-two, he absorbed a natural sense of “Deaf Essence” and embraced the language, culture, heritage and arts of the deaf community into his heart. His use of ASL is admirable and crystal-clear — and his style of delivery and rhythm are thoroughly powerful and exemplary. He is happily married to a lovely, brilliant woman, Patricia Moloney, who is not deaf but deeply immersed in ASL as a well-rounded interpreter. They have a charming hearing daughter, Brianna Mai, now 9 years old, who was born in Vietnam and who is also fluent in ASL.
BB

Fortunately, I have a copy of the autobiography he mentioned, “Lessons in Laughter”. I turned it to the particular pages and surely, Bragg had authored 6 pages about how the NCSD incident in 1977 was among the first inspirations that led Schwartz to his law career.

After securing Bragg’s copyright permission, here is the story of Michael Schwartz, copied word for word from the book. The story of Michael Schwartz is of an oral person who immersed himself into the deaf community only to emerge as a complete person in all walks of life.

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If it hadn’t been for NTD, I would not have met one of my most cherished friends. Our friendship began with a letter I received in 1974. Dear Bernard Bragg,

I was born deaf but never thought myself deaf, at least not until recently. I had never gone to a deaf school and knew nothing about deaf culture. The first time I saw deaf people was at age thirteen when i happened to walk with my mother and saw three or four deaf men gesticulating across the street. I wondered at the strange manner in which they moved their hands, and at their animated faces. When i asked my mother why they kept waving their hands, she said, “Oh, they’re deaf and talk with their hands. They don’t speak with each other.”

I felt the same way as she. I could not relate to them. My father is a professor of social work at Columbia University and my mother is a social worker, a former student of my father. I have a brother whose hearing also is normal. But my own is not. Even so, I had always been treated like a hearing person in the environment I grew up in. I am a good lipreader and my speech, while not perfect, is understandable. Since it is not so clear to outsiders, however, I had a speech tutor all my life, until my college years. Even so, growing up sheltered in a small world with a few friends, in an upper class neighborhood in New Rochelle, I did not consider myself deaf.

When I was fifteen going on sixteen, I went through on identity crisis, a normal one, the kind hearing adolescents also have, or so I thought. At high school I skipped a class so that I graduated early and went on to Brandeis where my older brother also is studying. I am very close to him here at Brandeis, so that I am almost never on my own. Or rather, I was never on my own, because Ifeel that my life has changed after my first exposure to the National Theatre of the Deaf. I saw a play being enacted by deaf actors,and I saw deaf people in the audience sign to each other. Talk about the shock of recognition! I had never realized till then how beautiful sign language is, and now finally I feel that I found my identity.

In the program of the play I saw your picture and a brief biography which mentioned that you are a former student of Marcel Marceau. I was stunned, because I worship Marceau. He had influenced me so deeply that last summer I studied with the American Mime Theatre in New York. I felt and still feel that in you I have found a role model, that you and I share the some love and admiration for Marceau. Perhaps because we both are deaf and both desire to express ourselves. Mime is my compensation, a kind of surrogate bridge linking me to the world. Next fall I am going to major in Drama at Northwestern University, and this coming summer I ardently desire to attend the summer school at your theater, the National Theatre of the Deaf. Could you help me get in?

P.S. I’m twenty years old.

The letter was signed Michael Schwartz and bore a Brandeis University address. I passed it on to the head of the summer school, but he said no. I argued that Mr. Schwartz was someone special because he came from neither of the two major constituencies supplying our theater with the new generation of actors-residential schools for the deaf and mainstreamed schools. But he was unyielding. Why? “Because,” he said, “Mr. Schwartz knows no sign language. He has to learn it before he can attend the school.” It did make sense, and I had to agree with it. We wrote Michael, informing him of the director’s decision, and shortly afterward we received a reply from him notifying us that he was going to take sign language classes at Northwestern University, as part of his master’s program in drama.

In due time he completed these classes, applied again to our summer school, and was admitted in 1976.

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Posted on March 7th, 2008 by tayler