Spanning two centuries, At The Hand Of My Mother seamlessly intertwines historical and contemporary accounts of the deaf community's ongoing struggle to communicate and exist on its own terms. Whether being forced to give up her language of signing at the Oralist convent to which she has been sent, or fighting her obsessive 'signing-only' mother for the right to join the hearing world, our young heroine finds herself at the mercy of those who have dominion over her and who claim to know what's best for her. While the second act climaxes in a shooting that the audience knows to expect from the beginning of the play, the gentleness with which it is juxtaposed against a concert performed by a deaf hand bell choir is heart breaking.