Actor and director Howie Seago, who appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation, was born 68 years ago today, on December 15, 1953, in Tacoma, Washington. Seago was born deaf, a condition inherited from his father’s side of the family. His father was hard of hearing, as is one of his brothers. His other brother, like Howie, is completely deaf and he also has two sisters, who both possess their hearing.

Seago’s mother got him interested in acting when he was a child when she directed him in a church play and helped him develop his mimicking abilities. In college, Seago majored in psychology at California State University and around that time he joined the National Theatre of the Deaf.

In 1986, Seago appeared in Peter Sellars’ Ajax, a mounting of Sophocles’ play with radical directorial choices. The play, which got terrible reviews, polarized audiences and ended Sellars’ two-year tenure as director and manager of the American National Theatre, but the production turned out to be Seago’s big break. Filmmaker David Byrne was so impressed with the performance that he cast Seago in The Forest, a theater piece inspired by the tale of Gilgamesh, playing in Germany at a series of cultural events called the Berliner Festspiele. He has since appeared in Austria’s Salzburg Festival and the Vienna Festival, and has directed for ARBOS – Company for Music and Theatre.

Seago has been instrumental in the creation and implementation of deaf youth programs in his home state of Washington. He set up the Shared Reading Video Outreach Program, utilizing videoconferencing technology to help deaf children to connect with tutors and each other in order to improve their literacy and communication skills. At Seattle Children’s Theatre, he is cofounder of their Deaf Youth Drama Program and has directed a Deaf Teen Leadership Camp, as well.

Seago has received numerous awards, including the Helen Hayes Award, the Dramalogue Award, and the Joe Velez Memorial Award. In addition, he co-produced the Emmy Award-winning PBS television show, Rainbow’s End.

Seago’s notable television appearances have been on Hunter, The Equalizer, and, of course, Star Trek: The Next Generation. In “Loud As A Whisper,” Seago played Ramatisian mediator Riva. The character was a member of Ramatis’ royal family, all of whom suffered from a genetic condition that rendered them deaf. The Enterprise is sent to shuttle Riva to Solaris V, where he will mediate a peace treaty, but when his chorus of telepathic interpreters are killed, he loses confidence in his abilities. It’s up to Counselor Troi and Captain Picard (with the help of Data’s newly-learned sign language abilities) to show Riva that he doesn’t need to be able to speak the Solari language in order to find common ground. It was Seago himself who petitioned the producers of TNG to write an episode dispelling myths about deaf people. In the original draft, Riva learned to speak overnight after a mechanical translator he used to speak to his chorus failed. The day before the cameras rolled, Seago suggested the much more subtle ending that was eventually committed to film.

Howie Seago has been a company member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival since 2009. He lives with his wife, Lori (who is a Star Trek fan) and his two sons, Kyle and Ryan, in Seattle. Neither son is deaf. Please join us at Daily Star Trek News in wishing Mr. Seago the very happiest of birthdays.