Sherry Hicks, MFA is an extraordinary performance artist, storyteller, educator, and cultural bridge-builder whose presence radiates both heart and humor. Sherry calls her work “musically inspired ASL storytelling” an immersion of theatre, movement, music, and living language that brings American Sign Language (ASL) to life beyond translation and into art. Born into a Deaf household, ASL was Sherry’s first language, and she stands proudly as an Oh Coda (Only Hearing Child of Deaf Adults), carrying forward the beauty, complexity, and nuance of Deaf culture into shared human experience.
With international acclaim, Sherry has performed in cities around the world from Copenhagen and Montreal to Vienna and Berlin, captivating audiences with her improvisational gifts and storytelling that is at once deeply personal and universally resonant. Through solo shows like “Phoenix, THE!”, “Triple Tongues”, and “The Color of the Wind,” she invites us into a celebratory space where language itself becomes movement, rhythm, and collective pulse.
At the heart of Sherry’s work is a deep reverence for language as ceremony, a way we honor identity, relationship, and presence. Her beloved character “Mabel,” a Deaf elder whose signs carry the echo of 1930s ASL, speaks to ancestral memory and communal laughter alike, reminding us that wisdom lives in the curves of gesture, the beat of shared laughter, and the unspoken threads between bodies in space.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Sherry also shares her gifts as an ASL/English interpreter, educator, consultant, and researcher, exploring bimodal bilingualism and the lived experience of Codas. Through performance, teaching, and community engagement, she brings a breath of fresh air and profound heart to every circle she enters.
Sherry Hicks interpreting as Robert Mirabal and band perform at the 2025 IndigenousWays Festival, Santa Fe Railyard Water Tower