Elephant Shoes Musical About Deaf Romance Premieres at Two River Theater

Elephant shoes are what people mouth when they want to look like they are saying I love you without making a sound.

That homophene inspired an original musical about a Deaf person and a hearing person falling in love, AMERICAN THEATRE reported.

The production features a book by Ivan Menchell alongside a score and lyrics by Caroline Kay, and it celebrated its June world premiere at New Jersey’s Two River Theater through a co-production with L.A.’s Deaf West Theatre.

Although Deaf West has previously mounted American Sign Language-inclusive shows such as Big River and Spring Awakening, this upcoming production stands as a pioneering sung-and-signed musical centered on a Deaf lead character and featuring a profoundly Deaf actor.

Daniel Durant stars as Cy, a Deaf tech developer whose startup is engineering glasses that translate ASL into spoken English and vice versa in real time.

Taylor Iman Jones plays Roxy, a data architect more proficient in Excel than ASL, while James Olivas appears as Cy’s roommate and childhood best friend, Chris. The setup is loosely based on Edmond Rostand’s classic Cyrano de Bergerac, with Menchell having begun writing the script five years ago.

Durant has a long history with Deaf West, having previously appeared in productions of American Idiot, Fidelio, and the revival of Spring Awakening, alongside his starring role in the film CODA. His very first show with the company was a 2012 production of Cyrano starring Troy Kotsur.

“I have to pinch myself every day knowing that this is actually happening,” Durant said through an interpreter.

Olivas, who recently played Juan Perón in Evita in the West End, noted the unique nature of the production. “When you’re adapting hearing work, I think you can find really beautiful things in the text—you can mine it and infuse new meaning into what already exists,” Olivas told AMERICAN THEATRE.

“But starting from the ground up with the first-ever musical for and about Deaf people and Deaf culture, is incredible. There’s never been a story like this before.”

Unlike Sim-Com, where speakers talk aloud while simultaneously signing—a practice generally discouraged because it compromises the grammatical structures of both languages—Elephant Shoes emphasizes clarity through supertitles, projected dialogue, and performers functioning as ASL interpreters. Jeff Calhoun serves as director and choreographer, collaborating with a creative team that includes artistic director DJ Kurs, associate director Joshua Castille, ASL choreographer Colin Analco, and associate ASL choreographer Bridget Berrigan.

“If words are notes, then signs are chords,” Analco explained of the visual-spatial language.

To manage the complex timing of a musical where performers cannot hear the score, Deaf West utilizes a system of color-coded cue lights programmed to deliver character-specific signals. Calhoun called the production “harder than teaching Twiggy to tap dance.”