Free tickets

"Can you hear me?" the angel says.

"Of course I can," the second angel replies.

But something strange is happening here. We cannot hear them. Nor can they hear each other. The actors playing these angels do not speak. They converse through American Sign Language.

"Sound lies," the first angel continues. "So does silence." They turn away from one another but continue their conversation. The effect is startling, eerie. One realizes, of course, that these are actors, reciting well-rehearsed lines from a script — but the illusion is no less strange for realizing that.

And then hearing actors enter the scene, conversing in spoken English and interacting, seemingly unawares, with the silent angels.

Caliban Productions is trying something new in this presentation of Tom Minter's play, "Perfection Unspeakable." The new play's intriguing puzzle of a plot and its perennial themes of free will, choice, and good and evil are compelling in their own right, but the form of the play — this collaboration of deaf and hearing actors — is what really sets it apart. How does one stage such a performance so that it is intelligible to an audience not composed wholly of hearing ASL interpreters?

I am, of course, admittedly biased here. When I tell you that David Garone is a skilled director who has assembled a talented cast, you'll note that I'm part of that cast* and will legitimately doubt that you should take my word for it.

So don't take my word for it. Come see for yourself.

On the house.

Like I said, we're trying something new here, and what we want more than anything else at this point is feedback, a response. And, of course, a bigger audience.

So for the rest of this week we're packing the house with comps. Come to the Adrienne Theater, 2030 Sansom Street in Philly, for tonight's show, or Friday's, or the matinees on Saturday or Sunday, and see something unlike anything you've seen before.

For free.

(If this strategy is good enough for Joss Whedon, it's good enough for me.)

Afterward we can all go to The Bard around the corner and argue about what it all meant.

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* A modest part. I'm a mere pawn in the chess game played out by our two angels — Robert DeMayo and Mike Canfield (above). But I like to think that by the end of the play I've worked my way across the board to become a … — I was going to say "a Queen," but somehow that doesn't sound quite right … — a, um, more significant piece.