I'm in the action, but I'm not in the action. A lot of the interpreting I do sometimes borders on performance. It gives me a personality and a presence to show the importance of interpreters in the life of a person who is Deaf.
When Marlee [Matlin] won her Oscar, she said, "and I just want to thank my parents. " When I was saying those words for her, I knew my parents were in the audience. I was saying it for her and a little bit for myself, even though I wasn't saying it in sign language and they didn't understand what I was saying.
A lot of times, if you watch sign language interpreters, there can be some lag time issues. When that happens, I think you lose the hearing audience.
I moved on to the University of California, Berkley, coordinating interpreters for Deaf students at the university. The first year I was at Berkley, we brought in artists, performers, actors, and poets to create a Deaf arts festival. I did a lot of the interpreting for the stage performers. By the second year, I realized that I really liked producing arts festivals that had to do something with signing.
Being in the hearing world was more of a challenge than being in the Deaf world, because I had to learn how to write and communicate in a way that I hadn't experienced growing up.
Sign language is my first language. English and Spanish are my second languages. I learned Spanish from my grandparents, sign language from my parents, and English from television.
Interpreting gives me a chance to do what I do well and have done since I was a kid. At one time, I might have wanted to be an actor or performer, and it somehow fulfills that in a non-threatening way.
Marlee has said a million times, "Wouldn't it be funny if there was a camera trained on the two of us?" because we get involved in some very interesting situations. We'll be on a plane and she gets handed a Braille menu because they think she is blind, or producers that turn to the director of a show she's on and say, "Marlee Matlin is great, but is she going to be deaf for the whole show?" She used to freak people out with the speaker phone in her car by having me sign what they were saying on the speaker phone and then she would speak herself.
When I grew up, there were no teletypewriters or video calls, so I primarily interpreted phone calls. At that time, where I lived, it wasn't embarrassing to have Deaf parents; it was cool to be able to speak a different language than everyone else.
Marlee [Matlin] is who she is and just happens to use an interpreter. I'm not a teacher. I'm not a helper. I'm just Jack, the interpreter guy.