Silence: Mabel and Alexander Graham Bell

By Trina Davies and Peter Hinton-Davis

It only takes one spark of love to change the world forever.

Mabel Hubbard Bell was a strong, self-assured woman—bright, passionate, and a complete original. Despite a near-fatal case of childhood scarlet fever that cost her the ability to hear, she learned to talk and lip-read in multiple languages. At nineteen, she married a young inventor named Alexander Graham Bell and became the most significant influence in his life.

This is Mabel's story, offering the unique perspective of a woman whose remarkable life was forever connected to her famous, distracted husband. From inspiring invention to promoting public service, Mabel and Alec challenged each other to become strong forces for good. Silence is a beautiful and true love story about how we communicate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Release date: Dec 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9780369101433

Trina Davies

Trina Davies is a playwright based in Vancouver, BC. Trina’s award-winning plays include Shatter, Multi-User Dungeon, The Auction, The Bone Bridge, and Waxworks. Her play The Romeo Initiative was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama in 2012 and was the winner of the Enbridge Playwrights Award for Established Canadian Playwright. Her plays have been performed across Canada and in a number of other countries, including the United States, Germany, Italy, and India. She has participated in artist residencies at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, the Playwrights Theatre Centre, and the Bella Vita Playwrights Retreat in Italy.

Book preview

A dark, undulating ocean sits under an overcast blue-grey sky. Sitting along the horizon is a wave form, creating peaks and valleys over both sea and sky. In the top half of the page in a black sans-serif is 'Silence.' Just below that in white is written 'Mabel and Alexander Graham Bell,' and at the bottom of the page in white is 'Trina Davies.'

Also by Trina Davies

The Romeo Initiative

Silence:

Mabel and Alexander Graham Bell

Trina Davies

Playwrights Canada Press

Toronto

Silence: Mabel and Alexander Graham Bell © Copyright 2020 by Trina Davies

First edition: December 2020

Jacket design by Marc Holmes

Playwrights Canada Press

202-269 Richmond St. W., Toronto, ON M5V 1X1

416.703.0013 | [e-mail] | www.playwrightscanada.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, downloaded, or used in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for excerpts in a review or by a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca.

For professional or amateur production rights, please contact:

Michael Petrasek, Kensington Literary Representation

34 St. Andrew Street, Toronto, ON M5T 1K6

416.848.9648

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Silence : Mabel and Alexander Graham Bell / Trina Davies.

Names: Davies, Trina, author.

Description: A play.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200376020 | Canadiana (ebook) 2020037611X | ISBN 9780369101419 (softcover) | ISBN 9780369101426 (PDF) | ISBN 9780369101433 (EPUB) | ISBN 9780369101440 (Kindle)

Subjects: LCSH: Bell, Mabel Gardiner Hubbard, 1857-1923 — Drama. | LCSH: Bell, Alexander Graham, 1847-1922 — Drama.

Classification: LCC PS8607.A9526 S55 2020 | DDC C812/.6 — dc23

Playwrights Canada Press operates on Mississaugas of the Credit, Wendat, Anishinaabe, Métis, and Haudenosaunee land. It always was and always will be Indigenous land.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts — which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country — the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), Ontario Creates, and the Government of Canada for our publishing activities.

A stylized, illustrated blue tree sits to the left of the words 'Canada Council for the Arts / Counseil des arts du Canada.''The word Canada is written out with a Canadian flag—a red maple leaf flanked by two vertical red stripes—situated above the final A.An orange O is bisected by a green and purple C, situated to the left of the words 'Ontario Creates | Ontario Créatif.''A large red A is bisected by an angled blue C, with a green O balanced between the two letters on the left. To the right of the OAC logo are the words 'Ontario Arts Council / Counseil des arts de l'Ontario' over a red line with the words 'An Ontario Government Agency / un organisme du gouvernement de l'Ontario' below the line.

For Cliff

and

For Iris

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword by Peter Hinton-Davis

Production History

Playwright’s Notes

The Cast

Silence: Mabel and Alexander Graham Bell

Act 1

Act 2

Brief Relevant Timeline

Opposing Views: A History of ASL and Oralism, Compiled by Katie Flannery, Sarah Plummer, Lorin MacDonald, and Meghan O’Hara

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Landmarks

Cover

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Foreword by Peter Hinton-Davis

Production History

Playwright’s Notes

The Cast

Act 1

Act 2

Brief Relevant Timeline

Opposing Views: A History of ASL and Oralism, Compiled by Katie Flannery, Sarah Plummer, Lorin MacDonald, and Meghan O’Hara

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Page List

iv

v

vi

vii

ix

x

xi

xiii

xv

xvi

1

2

3

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

72

73

74

75

76

77

78

79

80

81

82

83

84

85

86

87

88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98

99

100

101

102

103

104

105

107

108

109

110

111

112

113

114

Foreword

Peter Hinton-Davis

Silence is an apt title for this play, but also a provocative and inviting one. All at once it defines the condition of its protagonist, Mabel Hubbard Bell, as a place of expression, awakening, and contemplation. It also speaks to the times she lived in; an all-too-familiar history of isolation, stigmatization, and solitude. Silence is the paradoxical only and beautiful thing for Mabel. It is an idea that is introduced early in the play and resonates powerfully throughout action and long after the curtain falls. Here’s a play without romantic idealization, but rather an affirming assertion that sound and words can be read distinctly. There is confusion in words and speaking and there is eloquence in many languages and cultures of communication. Signing and speaking work in tandem in unique and expressive ways.

Interestingly, silence is also a good condition for reading, for absorbing Trina Davies’s wonderful play, and ultimately for imagining it in the theatre. All plays are words written for actors, to be communicated to others, either spoken aloud or signed. At best, a script is a roadmap for a performance. A playtext is not easy to read, for the experience is, in a way, incomplete. A play is only a work of literature by chance and/or necessity. The lines in a play are devised to be conveyed in an imagined moment of time, enacted by characters, interpreted by actors, conceived and brought to cohesion or collision by directors, visually made manifest by designers, realized by a team of technicians and craftspeople under the organization, guidance, and creativity of stage managers, producers, and coaches, then, ultimately, only coming to life with an audience who witnesses its actions and drama.

Theatre comes from the Greek word theatron meaning the seeing place. And since our earliest rehearsal, seeing, hearing, communicating, and understanding were a part of our practice and became the task of realizing the play in three dimensions. Our cast and creative team were made up of hearing, Deaf, and hard of hearing artists. It demanded we reconsider how we work together and provided one of the fullest theatrical expressions I have been a part of. I learned so much, and taking the story as our guide, found new means of expression and communication. I am grateful to the actors, designers, interpreters, and crew, as well as all the good folx at the Grand Theatre in London and the National Arts Centre in Ottawa who joined in this agreement and were all the better for it. And all from a play! Thank you, Trina Davies, for writing it and allowing us to carry its perspectives with respect and rigour.

Silence is a love story, but like many love stories it is a ghost story too; haunted by its own power, its own mythologies, and the formidable obstacles that still continue today. We can look at this play and ask ourselves, What has changed? We can follow this love story and ask ourselves, What did love overcome, and what was this love unable to endure?

Like many love stories, it is also a story about loss. Somehow the measure of love is always loss. When Mabel Hubbard