By Audrey Luk

Posted Monday, June 27, 2005; 20:00 HKT
For a craft largely driven by speech, theater lends itself surprisingly well to the hearing-impaired—particularly when it's in the hands of Hong Kong's Theatre of the Silence. Established in 2000, the group has successfully toured Asia, Europe and North America to present its elegant mimes. "We were taught how to make our actions crisp and simple, such that any audience member could understand what we were trying to impart," says actor Edwin Chan. That isn't to say that speech is off the program entirely. In the company's latest production, My Red Dress, hearing actress Bettina So narrates and interprets for the audience, while the rest of the group acts out a story of the horrors of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. It's helpful to a point, but at the play's most moving moments, pure silence reigns.

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