CODA Movie Getting Musical Stage Adaptation by Deaf West Theatre

Vendôme Pictures and Pathé Films will partner with Deaf West Theatre to develop a stage musical adaptation of the Academy Award-nominated film CODA. The movie is nominated for Best Picture, Writing (Adapted Screenplay) and Troy Kotsur is nominated for his performance. The 2022 Oscars will air on ABC on March 27.

Directed by Siân Heder and starring Emilia Jones as well as Broadway alums Marlee Matlin, Kotsur, Daniel Durant and Eugenio Derbez, CODA premiered on Apple TV+ in August 2021. The film has earned multiple nominations and wins at the 2022 BAFTA Film Awards, Critics Choice Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards, Independent Spirit Awards, Producers Guild of America Awards and Writers Guild of America Awards, as well as being crowned Movie of the Year at the AFI Awards. CODA also made history by being the first predominantly deaf cast to win the ensemble prize at the SAG Awards. Kotsur is the first deaf actor to win Best Supporting Actor at the SAG, BAFTA and Critics Choice Awards.

CODA follows 17-year-old Ruby (Jones), who is the sole hearing member of a deaf family–a CODA, child of deaf adults. Her life revolves around acting as interpreter for her parents and working on the family's struggling fishing boat every day before school with her father and older brother. But when Ruby joins her high school’s choir club, she discovers a gift for singing and soon finds herself drawn to her duet partner Miles. Encouraged by her enthusiastic, tough-love choirmaster to apply to a prestigious music school, Ruby finds herself torn between the obligations she feels to her family and the pursuit of her own dreams.

“In the movie, there is a scene where the Deaf members of the Rossi family, confronted with an inaccessible school performance, take in Ruby’s song through the joy of others in the audience," DJ Kurs, Artistic Director of Deaf West Theatre, said in a statement. "This is an opportunity, then, to bring the story full circle by bringing it back to members of the Deaf community and by making the music accessible through our signed and sung live adaptation of the movie."

Matlin and Durant previously starred in the Tony-nominated production of Deaf West's Spring Awakening.

Watch the trailer for CODA below!