ABOUT US
A Philadelphia ASL interpreting company built entirely around live performance. Eighty-plus interpreted performances a season, since 2007.
An interpreting company run by working interpreters. Brian Morrison and Donna Ellis founded Hands UP in 2007, still run it together, and still interpret shows themselves. Around them: thirty-five-plus interpreters and coaches, eighty-plus productions a season, fifteen-plus venues. What holds it together is preparation.
HOW WE GOT HERE
Brian had just come to Philadelphia from the Juilliard theatre-interpreting residency. Donna had ten years as an Equity actor and a freelance career across four states. They’d interpreted Chicago together and wanted more of that. So for a year they met every Friday at the same Starbucks and built a company around the parts everyone else was skipping: script study, rehearsal, deliberate translation choices, real conversations about placement and lighting.
Nineteen seasons later, that’s still the whole idea.
HOW WE PREPARE
Six to eight weeks per production. First, table work: script open, hunting for trouble — puns, double meanings, the lines that won’t survive a literal rendering. Then the scripts go down and the team rehearses in the theatre with a Deaf coach who watches, takes notes, and sends them back for another pass. Hamilton took four.
WHAT WE BELIEVE
Access usually shows up at the end, after the design is locked and the budget is spent. Plan it alongside everything else and the sightlines work, the lighting works, and Deaf audiences get the show the writer wrote. That’s not charity. It’s better theatre.
CO-FOUNDER
Brian wanted to be in the theatre; he just didn’t have the voice for it. Interpreting became his way in. Thirty years on, he has interpreted more than a hundred plays and musicals, trained theatrical interpreters nationally and internationally, and is Associate Professor and Program Coordinator in the ASL/English Interpreting Program at Community College of Philadelphia. He lives in Glenside with his husband and their two dogs.
CO-FOUNDER
Donna came to interpreting from the other side of the stage, after ten years as an Equity actor in New York. Nearly forty years later she’s still doing both: more than a hundred performance credits, legal certification, and a good share of the region’s theatrical interpreters trained by her. The bench Hands UP draws from is, in no small part, one she built. She lives in Sicklerville with her husband.
“The style to her substance.”
Ask them about each other and you get the shape of the partnership. Nineteen seasons in, they still interpret together, and they’re both still nervous before every show.
WHAT I LEARNED TODAY
with Hands UP Productions
ON THE RECORD
Donna and Brian sat down with the What I Learned Today podcast for an hour: bringing ASL-interpreted performance to Philadelphia stages, how the relationships with theatres got built, and how somebody gets into this work.
STOP SNITCHIN · FEBRUARY 2024 · 59 MINUTES · CAPTIONED
Thirty-five-plus interpreters and coaches, cast for each production the way a director casts a role. We don’t think of them as a pool. We think of them as a company.
19
seasons
80+
interpreted performances a season
35+
interpreters and coaches
15+
partner venues
800+
interpreted performances and events since 2007
WHY WE DO THIS
Live performance happens once, in front of you, that night. Deaf audiences have been shut out of that far more often than welcomed in, mostly because it was never quite anyone’s job.
Thinking about interpreted performances for your season? Here’s how we work.
Find upcoming interpreted performances across the region.
Interested in performing arts interpreting? We run workshops and mentorship, and we’re always meeting new colleagues.
