Rachel Chaikof was two years old when, with the help of cochlear implants, she heard her mother’s voice for the first time. “Cry Rachel, cry Rachel, ” her mother sang, alongside Rachel’s grandmother, who clapped her hands, watching her granddaughter, born completely deaf, respond to sound. “My family and I never understood why my sister and I were born deaf,” Rachel, now 30, says, “We knew it was genetic, but we never really had an answer.”
The Kinsey Sicks, a dynamite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet, explode on Theater J’s stage for a limited run of their new politically charged show Things You Shouldn’t Say, saying and singing anything they damn well please.
“Rabbis were telling me that if I have a gift like that, I shouldn’t sit on it. But I felt that rap was going to lead me away from my spirituality.”
Though a broken mirror foretells seven years of bad luck, Theater J’s production of Arthur Miller’s Broken Glass foreshadows nothing but promise from the riveting cast exquisitely directed by Aaron Posner.
“It’s a play that will speak very differently to different people depending on where they are in their lives.”
