Global hands in liberation: Deaf West Theatre, Los Angeles Philharmonic and White Hands Choir’s Fidelio

LA Philharmonic-Deaf West Theatre’s 2022/2024 co-production of Beethoven’s Fidelio brings together over 170 artists from performance groups based in Los Angeles, Venezuela and Spain. The groundbreaking production engenders continual intercultural exchanges between Deaf and hearing worlds, and English-speaking and non-English-speaking worlds. Drawing from Mary Louise Pratt’s contact zones and informed by Deaf and disability studies frameworks, the article focuses on the production’s layers of contact as they occur onstage and offstage, as well as its emphasis on sign languages and Deaf identity. Stephanie Lim argues that this Fidelio generates a working physical space for Deaf and hearing artists in which sound, music and language are continually negotiated. In addition, the production becomes a model of Deaf world-building that attempts to liberate musical performance from hearing paradigms, producing a vision of the future in which Deaf and hearing worlds more equally collaborate and coexist.