A 5′9″ foot tall olive-skinned man who looks impeccably Italian with “fast and furious” arms flashing signs faster than neon lights is drawing laughs while people crowd in asking, “what did he just say,” with him effectively switching from John Leno to SuperDeafy saving the day before one can answer that question.

The well dressed entertainer, who looks like he just emerged from a cruise or stepped down from the stage in Las Vegas, is John Maucere, the “Most Versatile Deaf Entertainer,” as Gregg Brooks put it.

Brooks is a part time lecturer for the Deaf Studies at California State University at Northridge (C.S.U.N.), he worked in the Hollywood Industry for over 40 years starting at Walt Disney Studios and other studios including Paramount Pictures Studios from where he retired as an archivist in late 2006, adding credibility to his comment.

With all the support Maucere has, nothing is stopping him, not even when the kids crowd him, almost tearing at his SuperDeafy cape. He’s got quite a following with an audience of all ages, especially the kids who love to imitate the SuperDeafy character Maucere has perfected.

The SuperDeafy character was created with the hilarious combination of S.E.E., PSE, ASL, Oralism, Cued Speech, and Rochester Method. That was blended so deaf people of all backgrounds can identify with their own Superhero.

Just don’t get bitten between speech bites!

“Hearing people have Superman as their superhero. What about deaf people? That is why SuperDeafy was created so the deaf world can have their very own deaf superhero who can sign,” Maucere states meekly Clark Kent style, with his eyeglasses brimming.

One of his most ardent supporters is his own beloved wife, Lauren Maucere, whom John speaks highly of, who has been by his side continually since they met and married, who has coached him, who even did a makeover on John Maucere’s “look,” he had always dressed the part, but it was his wife who “shaped and molded” him to the image he portrays to thousands, even millions of people today.

Now dressed Hollywood style, he has wowed both the deaf audience and some Hollywood insiders, particularly actress Emma Samms who starred in Dynasty as Fallon Farrington Colby in the mid-80’s, who also played a role as as Arianna Carlin Luthor, the ex-wife of the anti-Superman villain Lex Luthor.

Maucere, having met Hollywood actress Samms, got the most important feedback which marked the beginning of his acting career.

At the time, he was a 4-year varsity football player at Gallaudet, playing basketball as well for fun. Sports was his forte, he was totally into athletics. Acting was just to amuse others, as well as his own family and deaf culture in whole.

First off, Maucere was always a character of his own, he always imitated people while deaf people did the guessing, he wasn’t seriously into acting but people kept noticing his knack for impersonating people, with him evolving into a true “impressionist.”

With Maucere having a heart to heart conversation with actress Samms, she looked at him and said, “You are an actor.”

“Say what,” said Maucere.

Samms continued, “You have it.”

Again, Maucere, becoming intrigued with the thought, had the look of hesitation.

With Nike’s favorite swooshing motto, “Just Do It,” Samms declared Maucere should go for it and display his acting prowess.

It was a life-changing encounter with actress Samms that led Maucere to leave Gallaudet University for Hollywood so he could become further exposed to the acting bug that propels many hopefuls to stardom.

Actually Maucere upon agreeing with Samms that getting into acting was his destiny, he said, “Maybe I can take drama at Gallaudet,” she pointed him into the right direction which was Hollywood. It was much better networking in Hollywood than just sliding on the dim-lighted stage on a college campus.

After some roles in Hollywood, particularly in “10-8″ and “Law and Order” among others, he went on to perform approximately 400 shows as a one-man show in his career.

Said Maucere, “If I just waited for the phone calls for acting roles in Hollywood, I would have maybe twenty roles in my lifetime, as opposed to just going for it on my own, doing something about it and have performed four hundred shows lifetime.”

Well said.

His talent was too good to pass up or to be sitting waiting for a lead role, he got into it full-throttle like a spaceship blasting out into space.

While he’s in space, let’s turn back the clock.

Even if his mother was deaf and could speak, with his father and brother hard-of-hearing with speech skills as well besides using American Sign Language (ASL), Maucere chose not to speak as he preferred using ASL as his sole means of communication. But his family included him in trips to the deaf clubs, where he was exposed to deaf culture. His family encouraged him to be who he is, the family comedian, who eventually expanded his role to the comedian to the entire deaf communities nationally and internationally.

Back to the earliest stages of being the impressionist he is, in California School for the Deaf at Riverside where he graduated from, he used to drop night sheets duplicating the curtain coming down and imitate all faculty staffers, dorm counselors, and fellow classmates, with his friends and other classmates guessing who the character was. He was always entertaining people back then, before his professional entertainment career began.

Maucere, back in the day there was no closed captioning, used to study television characters, incorporating their facial expressions and mannerisms into his core being, he had a fascination about how people behaved so he could copy their personalities.

He absorbed everything to who John Maucere is today, like a sponge, the actor and impressionist.

What caused Maucere to truly understand how important it was for him to take the stage was a side job at National Center on Deafness (N.C.O.D.) when he worked with Tony Ivankovic, who still works there to this day. Ivankovic had Maucere to do editing on old 8mm films of deaf culture in deaf clubs from the 40’s to the 70’s.

His mouth gaped wide open.

What he saw, was deaf people mingling, circulating, he was seeing the old ASL signs, the jokes, seeing all the signs before the era of sensitivity changed things in appeasing to the now more politically-correct era. He saw the acting on stages before there were TTYs and Videophones, way before the Internet existed.

Right there Maucere knew he was in the right place at the right time in a modern era, he was ready to put his acting gloves on and let his hands mesmerize audiences in the same manner he was drawn by the 8mm movies that opened the deaf world to him completely.

A few people played huge roles in the gateway to his bright career. Not just the imitating people, the 8mm movies, or his wife, who is a great partner, but there were also a few other significant things that guided Maucere to his fate.

“It was Marlee Matlin who first broke barriers for other actors including myself,” says Maucere.

When Matlin won the Academy Award for Best Actress starring in Paramount pictures’ “Children of the Lesser God,” that rocked Hollywood and opened the floodgates for any aspiring deaf actor who was good enough to have a role in Hollywood.

DeafNation’s Joel Barish and his brother Jed Barish played very crucial roles in encouraging Maucere to go all-out with his one-man show, with his wife Lauren Maucere seconding them, in the DeafNation Expos that are hosted in 15 cities nationwide annually. Ever since, he has played in a variety of roles, such as the John Walk, doing his mock-up of John Leno expertly with his shaking head, and the SuperDeafy walk which eventually resulted in SuperDeafy dolls being manufactured and sold through DeafNation.com.

Said Joel Barish, CEO of DeafNation, “John Maucere had great potential utilizing his talents, he has great teamwork with DeafNation. I have seen his shows hundreds of times and I still laugh hard!”

“It is a barrel of laughs even though I saw the show like fifteen times, and I always would see something different or unexpected coming out of his show,” added Dan Brubaker of Sprint Relay.

It’s like a release of the laughing gas, only SuperDeafy can rescue you if the laughter hurts your belly.

Maucere Family