Story and Photographs by AMBER HELD Special to the Palisadian-Post Language is humanity’s greatest gift. It expresses thoughts, feelings and hopes. At Cape Coast School for the Deaf in Ghana, West Africa, the distinctiveness of the language embodies the culture, which I have strived to reveal in photos. Most of the images I have selected involve the hands in some activity: exchanging information, washing hands or holding something. In his book “Seeing Voices,” Oliver Sacks eloquently describes the beauty of sign language: “Sign can evoke a concreteness, a vividness, a realness, an aliveness, that spoken languages, if they ever had, have long since abandoned.” As a student at Boston University majoring in visual anthropology, I took a leave of absence last spring to participate in the School for International Studies study abroad program in Ghana, West Africa. The framework for a 10-week cultural immersion process included traveling to seven of the 10 regions, living with homestay families in a rural village and in the capital city of Accra, attending lectures, hands-on workshops, and participating in daily activities. This all lead up to a fieldwork independent study project. Equipped with a stipend, contacts and field resources, I was given four weeks to compile a written report and prepare an oral presentation of my research. My project, “Disability Not Inability,” is a photographic essay and case study at Cape Coast School for the Deaf. Refreshing my American Sign Language skills was the first step in participating at Cape Deaf. Most of the students were new to the language, so we were learning together. Some of my students wrote pidgin English on the chalkboard or could lip-read. In any case, the barrier came down when I danced to the vibrations of the drums at their cultural troupe rehearsal. After wrapping their cloth around my waist, we performed the Bima dance, celebrating the completion of exams, as well as marking the last day of my three weeks with them. By documenting the students’ daily activities at this residential school, I appreciated all their talents. The vocational potential for the deaf is high. Headmaster Robert Harrison Akyea exclaimed, “The future is bright! The school will enable them to establish businesses. At first, people were hiding their deaf children, but this time they are bringing them to us.” Because the students constantly use their hands, they just need to be encouraged to use them for skills and crafts. Akyea wants to provide this support: “The deaf need self-esteem, they need to know they have a lot to offer. We encourage them by giving them opportunities in many fields and endeavors.” Direct experience gives Cape Deaf students the confidence they need to practice and master these crafts. “My attitude has changed positively since living at Cape Deaf,” says student Bangalee FoFana. “I want to have a good education because deaf education is more precious than GOLD.” Not only does he recognize the importance of his education in Ghana, but he is sensitive to deaf people everywhere. “It is very important to help our deaf brothers and sisters over the world to know about our culture.” Deaf awareness sends the message that there are opportunities to learn new skills, communicate and live a fulfilling life. If you want to provide resources for Cape Coast School for the Deaf you can contact ambrheld@bu.edu. Amber Held, a Palisades High School graduate, is a senior at Boston University. Her black-and-white photo depicting intertwined hands (above left) won honorable mention in a School for International Training photo contest.

Geoff Sobelle found his way to being funny by finding himself in the world. “The clown reveals himself,” says the former Palisadian, and co-star of “all wear bowlers,” currently on stage at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. “It’s what you believe that’s funny.” The 29-year-old actor is talking about the kind of theater where all that’s needed is an actor’s body and imagination; a kind of theater where you play daily life and where the dynamic study of human nature is the basis for character. Although Sobelle says, “I knew as a little kid at St. Matthew’s that I loved being in plays,” he didn’t pursue it in high school. “My head was in the clouds,” he recalls, “I was always missing audition dates.” Sobelle did find an outlet for his performance by practicing magic, and is still a member of the Society of American Magicians and the Magic Castle in Hollywood. Although he has since moved on from there, he says magic informed the way he thinks about theater. “I strategize and think about things as a magician would. Its technical aspects appealed to me, and I loved the absurdity of magic’all the work that goes into a three-second effect.” At Stanford, Sobelle studied English. “I felt like when I was at school it would have been a shame not to take advantage of all the classes available and that it would not be good to spend all my time in theater.” But, by his junior year he was ready for a break and went for a year to study at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris, where he learned the physical language of the kinetic theater, using mime and movement. “It was a new way of seeing the world. Lecoq taught you to look at things, to enter a space and see the space, and breathe. “Lecoq’s method was not so much about pantomime, but more of a corporeal mime,” Sobelle explains. “How do you see the wind? You see the wind’s effect on a flag, or a branch. How do you see jealousy reflected in the actor? You see the forces of nature at play once the actors are there.” A few magic tricks, extraordinary athleticism, covetous body language and defined characters combine in “all wear bowlers.” The play tells the story of two silent film clowns, Earnest Matters (Sobelle) and Wyatt R. Levine (Trey Lyford), who take a wrong turn and find themselves off the movie screen and into the audience-filled theatre. The opening segments of the show are a complex combination of film and live stage shenanigans. Moving from the silent screen, they literally break through the fourth wall and into a riotous existential nightmare. The clowns walk through the skin of another life. What makes the pair so funny is their relationship, which recalls Laurel and Hardy, or the two tramps who quarrel, make up and contemplate suicide in “Waiting for Godot.” In early stages of “bowlers,” Sobelle and Lyford worked with David Shiner (“Fool Moon,” Cirque de Soleil) to develop the piece. Shiner didn’t think it was funny at all, Sobelle says, adding that he “speaks amazing truths and was very demanding.” Sobelle says Shiner thought it was a series of tricks and pranks that lacked recognizable characters. “His critique changed the way I think about stuff. You want to let the audience see for themselves who you are.” Sobelle as Earnest is more the Oliver Hardy character. “Everything is very important to me, very crucial, but myopic,” he says. “I’m the type who is intent on screwing in the last bolt while the house is falling apart. Earnest is involved in the matter of things, and doesn’t see into the phenomenon of things, whereas Wyatt sees outside the box.” The two are outrageous, as when they kick a couple of audience members out of their seats and haul the seats up onto the stage. They are masters at slight-of-hand, as they conjure all manner of tricks from inside their pockets, and they are linked in perfectly timed choreography. Their bodies are fine-tuned, from the masks of expression to the balletic pratfalls. While at Lecoq, Sobelle met some students from Swarthmore College, who went on to found the Pig Iron Theatre Company, a dance-clown theater ensemble in Philadelphia. Sobelle joined the group in 2000, and during the midrun of “all wear bowlers” in New York last year took a month off and toured with Pig Iron, and created a new piece with them about Edgar Allen Poe, entitled “Red Eye to Havredegrace.” Now, he and Lyford are enjoying the momentum of “all wear bowlers.” Since its opening in New York in January at the HERE Acts Center in Soho, the show is being booked in theatres all over the world. It will be in Genoa, Sydney, and London within the year. Following the rehearsals at the Kirk Douglas, the newest in the Center Theatre Group stable, Sobelle was seduced. “All the technology and props are nice. We’re used to mostly very humble black boxes’the basement of a church in Edinburgh. This show can live anywhere.” “all wear bowlers” continues at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd., through October 28. Ticket prices range from $20 to $40. Contact: (213) 628-2772.

Members of the Pacific Palisades Historical Society and their friends will visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s recently restored Hollyhock House and the Municipal Art Museum in Barnsdall Park on Saturday, October 15. Hollyhock House, named after Aline Barnsdall’s favorite flower which she requested Wright to incorporate into the design of her residence, was built between 1919 and 1921. Constructed of hollow tile, wood frame and stucco, the house takes advantage of the southern California climate by including outdoor and rooftop terraces and a courtyard which Wright designed to be extensions of the indoor living spaces. Hollyhock House was the first of Wright’s buildings to be constructed in the Los Angeles area and was described by him as a “California Romanza.” The use of flat roofs, bands of cast-concrete ornamentation and elongated garden walls extending from the house help give it its low, horizontal character so typical of Wright’s earlier work. Participants may park on Los Liones Drive before 8:45 a.m. for a 9 a.m. departure. The bus will return by 3 p.m. To make a reservation, contact Bob Freidin at 230-0925 and send a check for $12 to the Pacific Palisades Historical Society.

On a clear day, a drive north from Pacific Palisades on PCH reveals an array of wildlife, historic and architectural treasures expanding from the 27-mile strip that is Malibu. Marian Hall’s new book “Malibu: California’s Most Famous Seaside Community” takes readers on an illuminating journey through the colorful and abundant enclave as locals know and love it. In addition to dramatic images by photographer Nick Rodionoff, the book includes sharp aerial photographs by Lou Bruhnke, which help situate readers in their exploration of the coastal and mountain areas. Hall, a longtime Malibuite, says she wrote the book to capture the peace, privacy and beauty of this seaside paradise. She was inspired by Frederick Hastings Rindge’s 1898 book “Happy Days in Southern California,” a book that she writes “came from his heart, describing with pure joy and love the Malibu that he knew so well.” Rindge was a businessman, the last private owner of the Malibu Rancho, more than 17,000 acres of coastal, mountain and canyon land with 22 miles of total ocean frontage. Romantic yet relevant quotations from Rindge’s book introduce each of Hall’s chapters. “I was surprised we could find a quote to fit even the most contemporary images,” says Hall, who grew up in Pasadena and moved to Malibu, just south of Paradise Cove on the ocean side, in 1973. A mother of four, she says, “we wanted to move to the beach and my husband worked on the west side of town.” Hall became one of the first docents at the Malibu Lagoon Museum, where she learned about the rich history that shaped Malibu. When it came time to research and write the history part of her book, Hall consulted with her historian friends Toni and Tom Doyle to make sure the facts were accurate. She also talked to Rindge ancestor Ronald L. Rindge, who’d written a book on the U.S. Coast Guard beach patrol in Malibu, realty historian Louis Busch, and Ernest Marquez, with whom she worked to get most of the vintage photos. In the process of gathering information and collecting images, Hall learned some things she didn’t know. For example, she says she was particularly moved by the mystique of Boney Ridge, located in the Arroyo Sequit area at the north end of the Santa Monica Mountains. Boney Ridge was created by an ancient lava flow, and Rindge called it “divine.” “You can see it in all different kinds of light and it’s so beautiful,” Hall says. She believes her book, published by Angel City Press in Santa Monica, will stand out on the racks among other Malibu books because it combines legend, lore and history with contemporary culture. A chapter on surfing covers the real Gidget, Kathy Kohner Zuckerman (a Palisadian), as well as contemporary wave rider Laird Hamilton, and the many crossover board sports popular today. But Hall says her editor cut out a lot of the celebrity photos with her blessing, since those images “would have made a difference in the feel of the book.” Instead, both the text and photos capture Rindge’s perspective much more than the glamorized Hollywood angle on Malibu. Hall herself is a former model who has been active for 50 years in the California fashion scene. She started modeling at Bullocks Wilshire and worked as a designer/manufacturer for 18 years before becoming curator of the Costume Museum at The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. She is especially interested in vintage couture and volunteers at The Colleagues Gallery in Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. In 2002, Hall collaborated with Sylvia Sheppard and Marjorie Carne on the coffee table book, “California Fashion.” When it came to choosing a title for her “Malibu” book, she suggested that the subtitle define Malibu as a community rather than a city because, she says, “it’s a city, but it’s not. I think community is more of what Malibu really is.” Hall will discuss and sign her book tomorrow, October 7, at 7:30 p.m. at Village Books, 1049 Swarthmore.