Trying to "Han'd"le Poetry - Week 3

Hi, I'm Han', and I'm using my hands to sign poetry...Is it a crime to use two puns at once?
Anyways, I did my first attempt at ASL poetry! You can find it at the bottom of the page, but if you were cool, you'd at least skim the other stuff I wrote.

Intro to ASL Poem

This person's name is Austin W. Andrews, but he goes by Awti, and he's an ASL storyteller. He can hear, but he was raised in a Deaf family, so he understands this from a Deaf and a hearing perspective, which is pretty cool. This video basically says (in ASL and closed captions) that ASL poetry and nursery rhymes had to do with rhythm and rhyme, just like any written/said poem or nursery rhyme.

• Rhyme: Signs such as "9" and "F" have the same signs. They both look like the "OK" sign that Hearing individuals often use. Using signs that look similar or have similar movements/orientation makes a rhyme scheme for the poem.
• Rhythm: When reciting any poem, there's a certain rhythm that you read them to, even if it's not a song. When reciting an ASL poem, you should say it with a certain rhythm or pace, and depending on the poem, you can go very slowly or upbeat and fast.

Nursery rhymes and poems have a certain rhythm.

Awti went to the beat of One, two. One, two three. Also, he rhymed "diddle" and "fiddle" by making a movement in which he swung his arms back and forth. Since this was a nursery rhyme, this was very upbeat and quick in order to keep children engaged. Most ASL poetry I found were slower and more dramatic, just like how most upbeat English poems are often for children.

Example of ASL poem
Here is an example of ASL poetry from handspeak.com called "The Star Arrow". It's a romantic poem, and you can find a rough English translation here.

I personally like this poem better than the one Awti did because he had to translate an English nursery rhyme, while this woman had all the freedom in the world to make it pure ASL.

My ASL Poem
I thought that a mix of a conversation and a poem would be cool, so I chose a famous scene from Romeo and Juliet (Act 2 Scene 2). Romeo and Juliet are at Juliet's balcony and Juliet says her famous soliloquy and rose quote.
(Remember to turn on closed captions:)

This was quite the challenge - 5 to 6 HOURS! But I had SO MUCH fun with it. I wanted to wear costumes for these, but I couldn't find any, so I'm wearing a sweater that says jardin, which means garden in French (this was probably better for Les Mis but whatever). Anyways, here was my process:

1. Cherry pick necessary lines: The original script is super long, and that was beyond what I could even dream of reciting. I had to know which lines were necessary for others to understand what's going on, but not too many so it was on my level.
2. Shorten the lines: I have no idea how Old Sign Language looked like, so I had to convert the lines into general modern English so I'd be able to figure out how to sign it.
3. Translate the lines: Obviously, I wasn't gonna sign every word I saw; I'm learning ASL, not Signed English. I had to figure out which words I could make rhyme and rewrote the sentences so that it made no sense in English, but made sort of sense in ASL. I couldn't use 100% correct word order because I don't know complex sentence rules for ASL, but I dumbed it quite down so it should make sense at least half the time.
4. Figure out rhythm: I couldn't sign too fast, since I'm a beginner, but I didn't want to go too slowly. I figured that an appropriate rhythm would be 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. I set it at 60mph, so 1 beat per second. I set up a metronome at 60mph for both Romeo and Juliet and went along with it.
5. Perform! This was the hardest for me. For the steps above, I was being a traslator and a poet, which was hard enough, but now I had to be an actress...in not just a different language, but a different mode of language. Imagine drawing out a scene with Ancient Greek heiroglyphics. Okay, ASL isn't ancient nor that convoluted but still, that's how intimidating it was for me. 
6. Caption: I figured out how to use YouTube, whew. I still had to take the time to find the Shakespearean lines again and write the translation along with it.

I want to expand on the "perform" portion: If you notice how the above signers recited ASL poems, they were showing a lot of emotion and using their space. Awti's entire lecture is very expressive, and if one were to do that while having a spoken conversation, he or she would stand out. It was hard for me to drop all of my preset ideas as a Hearing person and act out the romantic and emotional scene of Romeo and Juliet the way a Deaf person would. There's certain portions of the video where I look REALLY WEIRD. I cringe when I watch the video, but I guess any performers - dancers, actresses, singers - can feel awkward when watching themselves express big emotions.

This is so exciting! I'll be off to a music festival for three days, so I won't be able to sign too much, but if I polish my presentation enough before leaving, maybe I could present to my friends!