Brandon Kaden-Maddox, ASL Artist

Brandon Kazen-Maddox was a Briarcombe Institute artist-in-residence in 2025. In this interview Brandon discusses their artistic journey, the importance of ASL as an integral part of their identity, and their mission to create accessible and representational art that celebrates the Deaf experience.

Interview by Katarina La Poll

You worked on your project Freedom during your time at The Briarcombe Institute. Can you tell us about your experience?

It was our first time at Briarcombe. It was me and Kevin and our executive producer, Jecca Berry, and we were the first artists-in-residence at Briarcombe. It was just so special to be able to come to a place that was so peaceful and off the grid and where as artists, we had the capacity to just be there to dream and make art, to be able to have food at our disposal was really important. Our own sleeping arrangements that were peaceful and safe and time devoted to make the art. I do my best artistic creation when I can wrap my mind completely around the work.

The project started first with me taking George Michael's Freedom 90 song then Christine and the Queen's version of that same song, and working with an artist, Brandon Walcott, who is a sound engineer, and putting those two songs together because I couldn't decide which one I liked the most. So we made a mash of both of them. Then I made a costume, a sequined unitard and worked with a choreographer and performed that piece in sign language and in an aerial hoop. I hadn't seen anyone doing sign language to a full song and a hoop. Then I built out more of a story.

Briarcombe came in and supported us, so I can continue to build this now two act play about a queer black child raised in a white deaf family. It's very exciting because without support you can't make anything. So that's where that is. 

Congratulations! 

Thank you. Yeah, it's been a journey. And I got these grants because I'm working on this American Sign Language dance theater production of a re-imagining man named Joseph Moncure March wrote a poem called "The Wild Party." There are two musicals already. There's a film that's older, but I was inspired to turn this poem into a piece of theater that is musical where the deaf people and the people who know sign language, who can hear, tell the story, and their voices are represented by musical instruments and American sign language and text. Hopefully more people can see what I'm creating and can become interested in supporting because the art that we're making is holistically accessible and it builds sign language into the fabric of the work. Not adding it as access as an afterthought, but building it in integrally. 

There's not too much mainstream media using ASL, or at least that I'm familiar with which is kind of surprising. 

Yeah. It's complex to put together. There are not really standards around these things. There are not really standards around ASL interpretation of, let's say theater, for example, it happens, but there are philosophies around things. There are companies that are focused on deaf theater, and at the same time, I'm not deaf, but ASL is my first language. So I have had to build my own space in this world because there's not really particularly a space for me. So that's why Briarcombe is so nice, because it recognizes that there should be space for everyone and there should be stories for everyone. 

So I took an ASL course at the Hoboken Library last year and the classes fill out every time. This summer, I tried to do take the class again, but it was completely full. So it seems like more and more people are interested in ASL! Just amazing it's this whole other language we can be communicating in.

And expressing ourselves in too, because it's different from English of course, and the sentence structure is different, but also it's like ASL is made up of, not words in particular, but rather thoughts and emotions and feelings and memories and hand shapes that represent those things. 

It does feel very poetic. I remember learning, sorry, how it was a fist over the heart, and that seemed like such poetry in the gestures. 

Absolutely. 

I read this phrase you wrote that “freedom explores how our personal expression through language contributes to our essential sense of self and what it means to have a language that cannot be taken away.” I was drawn to this phrase, “a language that cannot be taken away.” Could you speak a little on that? 

Yeah, it's interesting, and that's a nice thing to have extracted because as a person who belongs to many communities—I'm a black person. I am also a queer person, gay, assigned male at birth, but non-binary. My mom is white and my dad is black. So, people can say biracial, but we are a multitude—we contain multitudes. Then my grandparents are deaf and I was raised by them, plus my mom and my aunts and uncle’s first language is also American sign language. The reason why we know sign language is because it is a necessity in our lives to be able to communicate with our family members. At the end of the day, I am not a deaf person. So sometimes people say to me, “Oh, well, you don't need sign language. A deaf person needs it,” but it's a part of who I am and it's a part of the fabric that makes me who I am and it's how I express myself. I talk and I sign and that is my accent. While I'm talking, I'm doing sign language. It's almost as if you come from Italy and you speak with an Italian accent, it's part of you, and you could work really hard or people could try and make that accent go away. Why would you do that though? For some form of assimilation or essentially erasure of culture. That's what it feels like when people sometimes say to me, “Oh, well, you don't have to use them.” And to me that's saying you don't have to have pride or identity in your culture, but that is part of my culture. Deaf people are part of who I am. So that's where that comes from is that some people have asked me if I can talk without signing. Or why I need to sign. Or you could actually just not sign for the rest of your life and step away from the community if you wanted to. They say that, but why would I do that? 

It is something intrinsic to you so who are they to say what your needs are? This is a part of who you are. 

Yep. 

I was thinking about assimilation when I read that quote. I was thinking about how my mom is from the Philippines and her first language is Tagalog, but she lost the spoken language around the age of eight in order to assimilate. So I was struck by that assertion that it cannot be taken away. I really love that. 

Absolutely. And that's the other thing, there is a lot of threat. I think that's why deaf people are very protective of ASL, and that's why you're supposed to learn sign language from a deaf person because it is from the perspective of deaf people. We wouldn't have sign language without deaf people and their need and right to communicate in a visual gestural way. And that's true. At the same time, if you're a hearing person, you fall in love with a deaf person, and in order to get their whole entire spirit, you have to learn sign language as part of who they are.

How do you move through the challenges of right now?

Well, one of the things that I do is find community. Community really helps me celebrate. Being around fellow artists, being around people who are creating and making, and whether that's pushing against the system through the art that they create, or making music to bring joy or theater, to bring awareness or that's where I find a sense of solace and identification with how difficult it is to be an artist. But if there are spaces where we can come together and celebrate. Last night for example, Kevin and I went to a place called Club Cumming, which is in the East Village in New York City, and it's a club owned by Alan Cumming, and there is an event called Mondays in the Club with Lance and all these singers and performers come together. It's similar to karaoke, but really high quality. So I go and I sing a song with a singer and it's very fun. It's a reminder to be in community and to remember that we're not alone. 

The poem The Wild Party was mentioned earlier.  Why did you pick that poem? 

I got to interpret it when I lived in San Francisco back in 2015, and I had the music come through my body and the story and everything, and it was like, whoa, this story needs to be told in American Sign Language, not in interpretation, but through the hands and spirits and eyes and minds of deaf people This story that has violence, strong themes, the darker elements of society. A lot of current stories that portray deaf people are very Hallmark, one dimensional. I'm interested in the underbelly of society, and yes, deaf people can curse and drink and do illegal things. They can murder people, they can be adulterers. I wanted to focus on a story that does touch on those things from the perspective of people who know sign language. It's humanizing. We're all humans and to sign is human, so we should all be able to make art that speaks of anything. It doesn't necessarily just be good or pious.  

Hopefully I'll get to see you perform sometime irl!

I do have a performance coming up in September. It's called, We Come to Collect: A Flirtation with Capitalism, and it is at the Flea Theater throughout pretty much the entire month of September. If you are in New York, then you should come see it. 

Check out more of Brandon’s work