Follow the Signs at Soho Theatre

Follow the Signs offers an empowering, sometimes uncomfortable and well-executed insight into what it’s like to be black and deaf in modern Britain. Particularly for a hearing person, the show provides a glimpse into a different language and way of being that few will know much about. From waving fingers in the air rather than clapping to a brief (and slightly too fast-paced) lesson in the BSL (British Sign Language) alphabet, the performance fully incorporates both BSL and spoken English as a duo, working together rather than BSL being separate and to the side of the stage.

Chris Fonseca contracted meningitis when he was two years old and lost his hearing, although he gained some of it back later through a cochlear implant. He (reluctantly at first) learned to sign, which gave him a way to communicate with the world around him, but he still spent much of his early life feeling alone. Children bullied him and teachers patronised him. Chris is black and deaf and is bullied and judged for both. Learning to feel the beat through the floor, Chris developed a love of hip hop and dance and eventually found community through co-performer Raphaella Julien.

Video, lighting, music, dance, voice and sound harmonise together in the evening’s performance to create a sleek yet raw production. Chris wears a hat to hide his cochlear implant, and the show begins powerfully with seamless spoken word as a bouncer – his lips zoomed in on on a screen – refuses to let him in, saying he doesn’t care if he’s deaf. There is also a striking fight scene where strobe lights entwine with Chris’s isolated, juddering movements to give us a jumpy, almost disconnected experience. While dance itself doesn’t feel central to this performance, there are some standout moves.

Follow the Signs is very good, but it ends abruptly and leaves one with a sense of being unfinished. It provides an understanding of Chris’s childhood, his experience of isolation and his anger at the fickle nature of allyship and awkward white/hearing people who won’t acknowledge his blackness and deafness out of their own discomfort. The closing scenes, where the performers confront the audience and use the space to vent their frustrations around racism, ableism and the fickleness of allyship, are powerful and raw; you can feel the genuine, pent-up emotion being expressed. However, the show doesn’t then go on to give a sense of Chris’s career and what he’s achieved as an adult, leaving one wanting to know more.

Sophia Moss
Photo: Phoebe Capewell

Follow the Signs is at Soho Theatre from 23^rd August until 27^th August 2022. For further information or to book visit the theatre’s website here.