Children of a Lesser God by Mark Medoff

In my theatre of diversity class, we just finished reading the play "Children of a Lesser God" by Mark Medoff. This play is about a School for the Deaf, and one student in particular named Sarah who is bridging the gap between the "hearing" world and the "deaf" world. She ends up falling in love with and marrying one of the workers at the school, named James. James was assigned to get Sarah to speak, who is known for not speaking and many think of her as a lost cause. When Sarah gets together with James though, this creates quite a stir. Many of the students think of it as betrayal because she is marrying a "hearing" man who will never be able to understand Sarah. Throughout the play she is struggling about being part of both worlds. We find out that Sarah doesn't want to speak because she feels she can do just fine on her own and not have to be like all of those "hearing" people that do not understand her. The play also shows Sarah's guilt about needing her husband to always translate for her. She wants to be able to do things on her own and not need another person always helping her.

The play is all about how much help people with these disabilities need and with whom they should get the help. Can people who do not have the disability truly help people since they do not know what they are going through? And really how much help do these people need? This play brought up many things that really thoughts that I never really thought about and really makes the audience think about disabilities and how much people struggle with everyday life while having these disabilities.