Condolences

• 09/17/2024

  Didier Flory

  Alfredo was my friend, and mentor. We created 5 plays together in the 80s that were performed at the Château de Vincennes. He trusted me and he deeply changed my life ever since. He played a major role to the rise of Deaf community, that goes beyond the Deaf people themselves, but also families, friends, educators and so on, as a linguistic and cultural community. He opened the gates of personal prides, culture to the Deaf community, but he also opened the eyes of the French cultural community, artists, directors like Claude Regy, Stanislas Nordey, Nicolas Philibert and so on who eventually considered Deaf culture and Deaf artists. Good Bye my dear Alfredo

• 09/15/2024

  Bill Moody

  Born deaf, Alfredo Corrado didn't learn sign language until he went to Gallaudet University in DC, where he not only finally discovered a full language, but decided to major in theater. He worked as a scene painter at New York's Metropolitan Opera and then as a designer for the National Theater of the Deaf (NTD). In 1976, for the US Bicentennial, the New York and Paris branches of the International Theater Institute (ITI) gave a grant to send Alfredo to several European countries to do non-verbal communication workshops to groups of Deaf people in each country with the view to establish an international visual theater to research a new visual theatrical language (not a sign language theater but a visual gestural language perhaps based on the International Sign that Deaf people use to communicate with each other when they do not know each others' national sign language. While the dream of an international visual theater with actors from different countries never came to fruition, the French government supported the creation of the International Visual Théâtre at the Château de Vincennes on the eastern edge of Paris, and Alfredo was named the Director in 1977. His research into a new visual gestural theater language led to a series of original experimental shows which were performed at the Château and in several theater festivals around Europe. IVT eventually moved towards a theater using French Sign Language and he was the artistic director. His theater, coupled with the work of linguists at the National Center for Scientific Research and a group of sign language militants at the national Deaf school in Paris, initiated a nation-wide Deaf Movement in France similar to the Deaf Pride movement in the US in the 1960s and 70s. He returned to the US around 1998. He had returned to France several times, but the last time, this past summer, he was in Reims to attend the giant biennial Deaf culture festival and to accept a Merit Award from the French Deaf Federation and be introduced to new generations of Deaf people in France, who showered him with praise and gratitude. Julien Bourge, a young Deaf French filmmaker, released a documentary earlier this year about Alfredo's work in France, and it has been seen across Europe and in the US and Canada. The theater he founded, IVT, is still going strong under the leadership of new generations of French Deaf people.

• 

  09/13/2024

  Ulf Hedberg

  Alfred was a true friend of Deaf France. Thank you Alfred what you have done for the Deaf French community. We will never forget you. Our hearts are saddened by your loss and our thoughts are with you. ❤️ Ulf Hedberg