"Switched at Birth" cast and creator talk about the all-ASL episode

On March 4^th, “Switched at Birth” will air a very special episode of the show that had some cast members feeling apprehensive. “Switched at Birth” often features ASL (American Sign Language) with subtitles in its episodes, due to the show having quite a few deaf characters, but the episode airing in March will be the first in the TV history to feature ASL only.

Lucas Gabreel (Toby) was surprised by the premise, but is looking forward to an easier work day. "My reaction was, 'Well, it looks like I'm not going to have a whole lot to do," Lucas Grabeel said. "I'm going to have some time off."

“Switched at Birth” creator Lizzy Weiss had always planned on having an all ASL episode air, but didn’t know that it would happen so soon. "I always thought would be a Season 8 thing when we're off the network's radar and to the network's credit, they were the ones that came to me and said, 'Let's do it now. It's an experiment. We're all sort of figuring it out as we go."

The episode is going to be told from the perspective of the deaf characters in the show, where the hearing characters will be seen from their perspective but not heard. Weiss said that this concept was a challenge to bring from concept to real life. "The writers and I were challenged to think in a more visual way because we didn't want it to just be a regular episode with a lot of captions, so the script even looks different. We're trying to show not only, 'Oh gee, it's really hard ... but, 'Hey, there are all these cool things that you can do in sign language that hearing people can't.' You can communicate across a theater privately and other little tricks. We're just having fun with it."

Are you looking forward to the all ASL episode in the spring?