Troy Story: The ASL Teacher Who Won an Academy Award

After repeating ASL 1 two times, I stepped into Troy Kotsur’s Level 2 American Sign Language class at a Burbank, California middle school. My motivation to learn ASL came a few years prior when I awoke one morning to a severe overnight hearing loss. The ENT specialist said I would be completely deaf one day. Level 1 wasn’t easy. I was 46 years old learning a new language and culture, which is very difficult, if not impossible for a middle-aged man to learn. I was thinking of giving it up, but then I met Troy, who made ASL fun and comprehensible. 

We had about ten people in Troy Kotsur’s class. It was rare for anyone to be absent, even though most of us were parents with full time jobs. Though our teacher didn’t have a voice, he had a unique ability to mime a meaning out of thin air, make us laugh, and his antics insured we’d never forget the sign. At the close of a lesson, we’d play a game, especially when his girlfriend, Deanne Bray, showed up. She would sign a hand-shape, and we had to dig our memories for an ASL gesture to compliment it.

The class was pure enjoyment, and due to Troy’s unique motivational skills, I got hooked on ASL for life. I went on to take classes at Pierce College and finished with ASL-4. Though my teachers after Troy were good, they couldn’t come close to his extraordinary talent. 

Troy Kostur was born in Mesa, Arizona in 1968 to hearing parents. When mother JoDee and father Len discovered their child was deaf, they learned ASL so they could communicate with their son, which makes a lot of sense. However, during the past twenty-five years as a deaf person, I’ve found few parents of deaf children bothering to learn ASL. Instead, they insist their children learn to lip-read, mainstream them into hearing classrooms, and never think about giving their child a language he or she has a shot at fluently communicating in. It’s interesting to note that sign language is the only language passed on by institutions rather than family. Troy’s experience, learning from his hearing parents, wasn’t the norm. 

Troy communicates in ASL better than most deaf people I’ve met. He attended the Phoenix Day School for the Deaf and later attended Westwood High School where he caught the acting bug. From 1987-89 he studied theater, television, and film at Gallaudet University, a Deaf college in Washington, D.C. During one class he taught us the sign for “ACTOR.” We soon learned Troy had an important role in a Deaf West play in North Hollywood. He left our class to prepare for the part and was replaced by another teacher. 

When my wife Jila and I received emails about Troy playing the lead in A Streetcar Name Desire, we went to watch his performance. In 2001 we saw him play Pap in Big River, a Deaf West production of the 1985 musical. A year later I noticed a TV Guide article about Sue Thomas: F.B. Eye where a Deaf agent works actively for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The woman playing the lead blew me away. Troy’s girlfriend, the one who taught his students fun ASL games, appeared prominently in the article playing the lead. After watching a few episodes, Troy showed up acting in a recurring role.

After one of Troy’s performances at Deaf West Theater, Jila and I went backstage to congratulate my ASL teacher. He was happy to see us and explained being away from his family was a downer, since they still lived in Arizona. So Jila invited him over for Shabbat dinner one Friday night and Troy accepted. Troy noticed immediately Jila and I were not fluent signers, so he slowed his signs so we could understand him, making the evening memorable. 

Troy told us about the different parts he had played on TV and in the movies. A decade later, I wasn’t a bit surprised that he nailed an important role in CODA, an Academy Award winning film about a Deaf family and their hearing daughter. In the movie, Troy plays the part of a deaf father to his hearing teenage daughter. NPR reported that Troy’s performance in CODA “awed both audiences and critics.” Not surprisingly, for his role as Frank Rossi, Troy Kotsur won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor, Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actor, and most recently, the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 94^th Academy Awards ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. He’s the second deaf actor to win an Oscar. Marlee Matlin broke the glass ceiling thirty-five years ago when she won best actress for her performance in Children of a Lesser God. 

For two years Troy filled my head with signs I’ll never forget. He showed his students his passion for ASL and it affected me. For over twenty years since my exposure to him, I’ve studied the language and am near fluent. I doubt I would have reached my current level of proficiency without the passion Troy put into his teaching; the same passion you can see in his performances. Today, even with hearing aids, I can barely understand hearing people talking to me. But when Deaf people sign to me, no worries. 

Thank you Troy Kotsur!

Michael Thal is the author of The Lip Reader, a novel based on the life of an amazing deaf woman.