Deaf West's Ed Waterstreet retires; new artistic director named
Deaf West Theatre is announcing Friday the retirement of its pioneering founder, Ed Waterstreet, and the appointment of his successor as artistic director, David J. Kurs.
During Waterstreet's two-decade tenure, Deaf West gained acclaim for its commitment to expanding opportunities for deaf artists and for developing a new kind of theater in which non-hearing and hearing performers express themselves through a combination of American Sign Language, spoken language and movement.
Since its founding in 1991, the company has gone from a borrowed space at the Fountain Theatre in Hollywood to its own home in North Hollywood. It has staged 40 plays and four musicals, including a revival of the '80s Broadway show "Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" that went from North Hollywood to the Mark Taper Forum in 2002 and to New York in 2003, earning two Tony nominations and a Tony honor for excellence in theater.
Waterstreet, 68, tells Culture Monster that his experiences at Deaf West represent "a wild and crazy dream that came true. To be honest, I never expected the success that came out of 'Big River.' I still can't believe it today."
