"Tribes"

Nina Raine’s prize-winning British play chronicles a clangorous and dysfunctional American family—a common enough theatrical trope. It differentiates itself on the strength of its anchoring character, Billy, the youngest of his clan of two siblings and two parents, who unlike the rest of his kin was born deaf and raised without sign language. He upsets his family’s dynamic when he meets a young woman, born to deaf parents and now losing her hearing, who teaches him sign language and sparks his independence.