"Inside performances" is a term coined for Deaf Studies which refers to art/media that was created by Deaf creators, with a Deaf focus, for a Deaf audience.

Claremont Graduate University

Deafness is often a highly contested or difficult topic in the arts and humanities as some find work featuring deaf characters often centers oralist ways of being or presents oralist pedagogies. Even if the play/ novel/ media does not present oralist concepts, non-D/deaf persons often interpret the deafness as a metaphor. Despite these contentions, Deafness is still popular and common in the Arts & Humanities and Deaf Studies frequently discuss the arts.

Deafness in the Arts and Humanities

Hall, A. (2016). Literature and disability (Ser. Literature and contemporary thought). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315726595

Literature and Disability

Children of a Lesser God is a play that started in educational settings but became popular in the 1980s and was shown on Broadway. The play depicted a d/Deaf woman and a hearing/ non-deaf man who struggle to form a relationship. Many critics and writers in the arts addressed the deafness in the play as purely metaphorical, noting that the d/Deafness represented the difficulty some couples may have with communication. This is only one example of how oralist conceptions take over pieces of media with d/Deaf characters.

Deafness in the Play Children of a Lesser God

Inside Performances

"Outside performances" is a term coined for Deaf Studies which refers to art/media that was not created by Deaf creators. Outside performances are more likely to portray things with an oralist focus or use Deafness as a metaphor.

Outside Performances

While the oralist tradition of using Deafness as a metaphor that is universal and not unique to the d/Deaf experience is considered inappropriate, some Disability Studies scholars, such as Lennard Davis, recommend using Deafness as a "critical metaphor" in which the Deafness of a character is meant to question the validity of ableism or oralism in society or the true value of speech. This is one example of how  writers/ creators might combat the fact that a reader or viewer is always an active participant in a story/ art piece that aids in constructing meaning.

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