Bernard Bragg was born deaf in 1928 in New York City to deaf parents, Wolf and Jennie Bragg. Wolf Bragg was well known in the deaf community as an amateur actor, and managed his own acting troupe that put on shows at deaf clubs and events. Bernard attended the New York School for the Deaf (NYSD) and was a theater major at Gallaudet College, where he directed and starred in many stage productions.

After graduating from Gallaudet in 1952, Bragg found a teaching position at the California School for the Deaf in Berkeley. However, he continued to be interested in the theater, and after seeing the famous mime Marcel Marceau perform, Bragg arranged to meet him. Marceau was so impressed with Bragg’s skills that he invited Bragg to study with him in Paris. Upon returning to America, Bragg started a second career as a mime, doing shows in San Francisco nightclubs and eventually becoming a regular performer on KQED-TV as “The Quiet Man.” He continued to work on his education career as well, getting a master’s degree in special education from San Francisco State College in 1959.

In 1961, Dr. Edna Levine of New York University contacted Bragg to suggest the idea of an all-deaf theater troupe. Five years later, in 1966, Bragg, Levine, and David Hays joined together to launch the National Theater of the Deaf (NTD). Soon after its founding, the NTD presented the first ASL performances on national TV for NBC’s show Experiment in Television. Bragg left CSD to act full-time with the NTD, and toured all around the country and the world, including a stint on Broadway and a term as artist-in-residence at the Moscow Theater of Mimicry and Gesture in Russia.

However, after 10 years with the NTD, Bragg stepped back to focus more on teaching and performing on his own, wanting to do more original ASL shows based on the deaf experience rather than ASL adaptations of hearing playwrights. He went on sabbatical and embarked on a worldwide tour of 25 countries, giving shows and lecturing on sign language and mime, before settling in as an artist-in-residence at Gallaudet in 1978.

At Gallaudet, he continued to teach, write, direct, and perform, including an appearance in the television movie And Your Name Is Jonah in 1979. He wrote or co-wrote plays including Tales from a Clubroom and That Makes Two of Us, and also wrote his autobiography, Lessons in Laughter, in 1989. He was given an honorary doctorate by Gallaudet in 1988. During this period, Bragg also wrote extensively on ASL and sign language in general, including co-writing Meeting Halfway in Sign Language with Jack Olson.

After retiring from Gallaudet in 1997, Bragg returned to California, where he taught at California State University Northridge (CSUN) while continuing to write and perform in plays such as To Whom It May Concern; Laugh Properly, Please; and True Deaf. In 2004, he traveled to Hong Kong to work with the deaf performers at the Theatre of the Silence and stage two productions, The Monkey’s Paw and Journey Into the World of Visual Wonders. In 2007, he toured the country with a new show, Theatre in the Sky, to raise money for the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) and World Federation of the Deaf (WFD).

Bragg was made a member of the Gallaudet Hall of Fame in 2015, and in 2016, he was honored by his old school, the NYSD, which dedicated a new theater named for him. Bernard Bragg passed away in 2019.