Super Bowl 56 Preview: Seven Deaf Representatives
It’s Super Bowl Sunday! LA Rams vs the Cincinnati Bengals! Almost everyone in America — and many around the world — will be watching! We’ll have seven deaf people on the field.
Kickoff is at 6:30 pm ET, which means the pre-game show should start around 6 pm. The game will be on NBC and you can view a dedicated ASL feed on the NBCSports.com app. You should have a laptop or an iPad dedicated to the ASL feed so you can see it while you watch the main broadcast on your TV screen.
The first deaf person we’ll see is Sandra Mae Frank, who is going to sign “America the Beautiful” and the National Anthem. This is the traditional spot for a deaf representative, who is selected by a special partnership between the NFL and the NAD.
Sandra is an actress who currently plays a doctor on NBC’s “New Amsterdam.” She has appeared on television shows and on Broadway for the successful “Spring Awakening” production from Deaf West Theatre. Sandra went to the Kentucky School for the Deaf and a local mainstream program, and then attended Gallaudet University.
The second, third, fourth, and fifth deaf people we’ll see on the field are just before kickoff at the coin toss. They are the captains of the California School for the Deaf, Riverside football team: Trevin Adams, Christian Jimenez, Jory Valencia, and Enos Zornoza. They were invited by the NFL to serve as honorary captains. They’ll be wearing their CSDR jerseys. The school is only an hour away from SoFi Stadium, so they are local representatives of the deaf community.
The sixth and seventh deaf people we will see are Warren “Wawa” Snipe and Sean Forbes, who are both rappers. They will perform the songs of Dr. Dre, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Mary J. Blige, and others in ASL. For Wawa, it’s his second straight trip to the Super Bowl. He posted a thoughtful reflection on his social media pages in which he said it is a blessing to him. Wawa is one of the founding members of the “Wild Zappers'' dance group that was very popular in the ’90s. Sean Forbes’s DPAN organization has been providing ASL access to the Super Bowl halftime show for years, and now he’s transformed himself from giving access on field himself instead of from afar. It is also almost a full circle for him because his music career started out in the Detroit area working with producers who signed Eminem at the beginning of his career. Now both Sean and Eminem will be “working together” once again.
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I saw a Facebook post by Amy Cohen Efron. She recalled how far we’ve come as a deaf community with representation in the 14 years since the 2008 Super Bowl commercial that was a skit of a Deaf joke, “Bob’s House.” It was about two deaf friends who drove down a street while honking to find which house had their deaf friends in it because they were the only ones who didn’t turn on the lights. Efron reminded us that there was controversy over it from the AG Bell Association, who wrote a letter to PepsiCo saying, “it offers a limited view of the deaf community” and a “misleading stereotype” of deaf people. Efron said, “Now 14 years later, we are displaying the beauty of American Sign Language at the Super Bowl… Remember we all did it. We persisted, we fought, and we are making the impact.”
So, we have seven deaf people on the field. Thank you to CSD Riverside for making an impact in Southern California, and thank you to the NAD for its special relationship with the NFL, and to Sandra, Wawa, and Sean for always pushing to showcase your creative abilities on all levels.
Enjoy the show and I’ll provide a recap with the highlights tomorrow.
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https://www.wave3.com/story/31034933/tuesday-at-11-pm-woman-from-the-bluegrass-on-broadway/