the times | Tuesday December 21 2021 5times2
celebrate with a new play
by Garfield, Everyday.
It has also recently just
put on its website three
short films in British Sign
Language, Talking Hands,
about the deaf experience
during the pandemic. “We
cheered when she got on
EastEnders, her career
has just gone through
the roof, but she still
remembers her roots,”
Garfield says. “I saw her a
few weeks ago. She’s very
down-to-earth, she’s the
same old Rose, fame hasn’t
made her diva-ish.”
If Garfield is optimistic
that things are changing
for the better for deaf
people, what are the big
misapprehensions that
persist? She says she has
spent too much of her
career having to answer
“ridiculous questions” from
directors about what deaf
people can and can’t do.
Her company’s work is
always bilingual: performed
in British Sign Language
and English. Their research
suggests their audience is
split 50-50 between the
hearing and the deaf. “The
aim is we want to build
bridges between the deaf
and hearing community.
“We want to show that
sign language is a beautiful,
rich language, we have our
culture, we have our community and
that’s what we’re trying to show.”
Garfield went to a mainstream
school where sign language was seen
as a negative. She spent a lot of time in
speech therapy, and feels strongly that
she should have been allowed time to
learn sign language instead. “When I
left school at 17 my reading level was
the equivalent of an eight-year-old’s.
Because I’d had no access to language.
People think speech is the best way to
learn. And you’re fitting in with
society. But actually what you’re
missing is language. That’s what you
should be being taught.”
So her former student’s success
might just be a significant moment in
spreading the word. Or spreading the
sign. It is also, she adds, above all an
advert for how good a performer she
is. Garfield’s favourite dance of the
series? Not the Couple’s Choice —
which earned a perfect score of 40
when Ayling-Ellis and her dancing
partner, Giovanni Pernice, carried on
dancing while the music cut out —
but the Argentine tango.
“Because it’s just not like Rose at all.
It was like she was a different person.
She used her acting skills within that
dance to show that she is so adaptable.
It was really quite sexy, it was really
quite hot. And she’s not like that. She’s
really sweet and down-to-earth. That
was sensational.”
Everyday is at the New Diorama,
London NW1, May 17 to June 11, and
Northern Stage, Newcastle, June 24
and 25; deafinitelytheatre.co.ukseeing people like myself and other
deaf directors and actors, it was a great
inspiration for her. She became good
friends with William Grint, who is
now performing with the Royal
Shakespeare Company. I think she
found her deaf identity, actually,
through that youth theatre group.
“In Strictly she always said, ‘This is
for the deaf community.’ It’s something
she really believes in. And I think the
foundations of that came from her
time with us.”
Ayling-Ellis was in both the
productions that Deafinitely created
as part of the National Theatre’s NT
Connections nationwide youth theatre
festival in 2012 and 2013. “She had a
really strong stage presence,” Garfield
says. “She was a natural, really, she
didn’t shy away from anything. And
lots of people were asking, ‘Who is this
girl? She’s fantastic.’ ”
In recent weeks Ayling-Ellis has
made sure to mention the company.
That has led to some private donations
to Deafinitely in time for its 20th
anniversary next year, which it willU
ntil 12 weeks
ago Paula
Garfield had
never watched
Strictly Come
Dancing. As a
deaf actress
turned writer
and director who runs the deaf
theatre company Deafinitely,
she didn’t think that the BBC’s
flagship ballroom dancing
show was for her. Nor one for
her deaf partner or their two
deaf daughters, aged 16 and 11.
Then she found out that
Rose Ayling-Ellis, the
EastEnders actress who had
spent a pivotal year in her late
teens with the Deafinitely
youth programme, was to
become the show’s first deaf
contestant. On Saturday
Garfield and family were
among the 11 million people
watching Ayling-Ellis become
Strictly’s first deaf winner.
“I was watching it every
week,” Garfield says on Zoom
from her home in north
London, communicating in
British Sign Language while
an interpreter translates. “I
think the first few dances she
did were just, like, ‘OK.. .’
And then she just got better
and better and better.
“My friends and I were
messaging each other all the
time. It’s just a lovely sense
of community and now we
are thinking, ‘What are we going to do
with our Saturday nights?’ ”
Garfield was one of the founders of
Deafinitely Theatre in 2002, frustrated
that mainstream theatre didn’t know
how to deal with deaf actors and
directors. To an extent they still don’t,
she says, although she believes that
Ayling-Ellis’s success will help to
spread interest and understanding.
Garfield was thrilled that Ayling-
Ellis used sign language in some
routines. “This [sort of breakthrough]
is something that should have
happened years ago. But I think it
shows that deaf people can do
anything, you know, other than hear.
I’m hoping it has an impact.”
As a child Ayling-Ellis, now 27,
took part in a filming project by the
National Deaf Children’s Society. Later
she appeared in a short film, The End,
by the deaf director Ted Evans, who
also worked with Deafinitely. Then, in
2012, when she was 17, she joined the
youth programme that Deafinitely was
running in London. She took part in
workshops led by deaf and non-deaf
directors, and worked on shows that
were performed at the Soho Theatre.
“Deafinitely Theatre helped
me hugely with knowledge and
networking,” Ayling-Ellis said last year
as she began her stint playing Frankie
Lewis in EastEnders. To Garfield, it
also helped to firm up Ayling-Ellis’s
identity as a deaf person.
“Rose went to a mainstream school,
which means she didn’t meet many
deaf role models,” Garfield says. “So
when she joined the Youth Theatre,at Tufts
University.
Almonds provide
vitamin E and fibre
and have been shown to
boost levels of “good” HDL cholesterol
when eaten regularly. They are a
potent prebiotic food, and eight weeks
of snacking on a handful of almonds
daily was also shown to improve gut
microbe diversity in a group of male
students. “Dark chocolate provides
antioxidants linked to heart and brain
health,” Marber says. “They are a
worthy snack.”Front-load your food intake
Marber says our biggest concern over
the next couple of weeks is not so
much what we eat as how much. “It’s
easy to consume in excess of 5,000
calories on Christmas Day, more than
double the recommended intake of an
adult, which is OK once in a while, but
not so good if it continues,” he says.
“Allow yourself a blow-out, but keep it
in check in the long term.”
It’s best to front-load your calorie
intake as much as possible, eating
more earlier in the day so that the
strain on your digestive system isn’t
overloaded by the evening. Habitually
eating too much after 6pm was shown
to contribute to weight gain and high
blood sugar in a study published in the
Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical
Endocrinology & Metabolism last year.
And if you can drag yourself off the
sofa, get outside. “Going for a walk
after a large Christmas meal will help
with digestion and blood sugar
control,” Marber says.GETTY IMAGESBrussels sprouts
and broccoli
The drama school for the deaf
where Strictly’s Rose started out
Dominic Maxwell on the actress’s path to dancing glory
Rose was a
natural. People
were asking,
‘Who is this girl?’
Turkey
Pigs in
blankets
Rose Ayling-Ellis, the Strictly winnerAllow
yourself a
blow-out,
but keep it
in check in
the long
term
BBC