Bernard Bragg

Bernard Bragg (September 27, 1928 – October 29, 2018) was a deaf actor, producer, director, playwright, artist, and author born in Brooklyn, New York. A co-founder of the National Theatre of the Deaf, he made Broadway appearances between 1969 and 1970, with credits including Songs From Milk Wood and Some Comments on the Harmful Effects of Tobacco. The New York Times described him as "regarded by many as the leading professional deaf actor in the country."

Bragg was born to Jennie and Wolf Bragg, both of whom were deaf, and grew up learning American Sign Language from his parents. His father, an amateur actor and play manager, shaped Bragg's early interest in theatre. He attended the New York School for the Deaf, known informally as Fanwood, before enrolling at Gallaudet College in 1947. There he studied theatre under deaf professor Frederick Hughes, took lead roles in school productions, and earned multiple honors for his performances. His undergraduate theatrical work culminated in his directing an adaptation of John Galsworthy's Escape. Bragg also wrote poetry during his college years, receiving the Teegarden Award for Creative Poetry in his senior year. He graduated from Gallaudet in 1952.

Following graduation, Bragg accepted a teaching position at the California School for the Deaf in Berkeley, where he directed student drama productions and contributed to shows organized by the National Association of the Deaf and the Los Angeles Club of the Deaf. In 1956, after attending a performance in San Francisco, he met mime artist Marcel Marceau, who offered to teach him mime in France. Bragg traveled to Paris at the end of that school year and, upon returning to the United States, incorporated mime into performances across California while continuing to teach. He later enrolled at San Francisco State University, earning a master's degree in special education with a minor in drama in 1959.

The idea for a professional company of exclusively deaf actors was first proposed to Bragg in 1961 by New York University psychologist Dr. Edna Levine. Funding proved elusive until Broadway set designer David Hays assumed management of the project in 1966. In 1967, Bragg, Hays, and several other theatre professionals and performers formally established the National Theatre of the Deaf in Connecticut. The founding prompted Bragg to leave his teaching post at the California School for the Deaf, a position he had held for fifteen years.

Shortly after the NTD was founded, NBC filmed Bragg alongside an all-deaf cast for a one-hour special as part of its series NBC Experiment in Television. The program premiered on April 2, 1967, and featured Bragg alongside Audree Norton, Ralph White, Howard Palmer, Gil Eastman, June Russi, Phyllis Frelich, and Lou Fant. Gene Lasko, Joe Layton, Arthur Penn, and Nanette Fabray contributed the script, musical score and choreography, stage direction, and program introduction, respectively. The broadcast marked the first televised instance of deaf actors performing and conversing in sign language rather than mime. Before it aired, the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing publicly criticized the special's use of sign language as inappropriate for television.

As a director and playwright, Bragg created a substantial body of work. Tales from a Clubroom, written with Eugene Bergman, premiered in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1980 and was last performed for a live audience in 2006. Other plays he wrote and directed include That Makes Two of Us, which premiered at Gallaudet University in 1982; On the Eve of Golden Wedding Anniversary, which premiered in Berlin in 1998; To Whom It May Concern and Laugh Properly, Please, both premiering at California State University Northridge in 1998 and 1999 respectively; True Deaf, which premiered at CSUN in 2000; and A Journey Into the World of Visual Wonders, which premiered in Hong Kong in 2004. Several of his productions were adapted for audiences in Germany and China. In 2013, Bragg appeared as himself in No Ordinary Hero: The SuperDeafy Movie. After relocating to California in his later years, he taught at California State University Northridge.

Bragg received numerous honors across his career. In 1975 he was awarded the La Decoration au Merite Social International — Premiere Classe by the World Federation of the Deaf. In 1977 the actors of the National Theatre of the Deaf received a Special Tony Award for Theatrical Excellence. He was inducted into the National Hall of Fame for Persons with Disabilities in 1986 and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Gallaudet University in 1988. Additional recognitions include the John Bulwer Award from the National Center on Deafness in 1989, the Honorary Founder's Award from the New York School for the Deaf in 1997, a Special Lifetime Achievement Recognition Award from the World Federation of the Deaf in Rome in 2001, the Bernard Bragg Humanitarian Award from ICODA in 2006, a Recognition Award as NTD Founder from the Texas Association of the Deaf in 2007, and the Fred C. Schreiber Distinguished Service Award from the National Association of the Deaf in 2008. The Center on Deafness in Chicago established the Bernard Bragg Artistic Achievement Award in his name in 1990. Bragg died on October 29, 2018.