Deaf actor, playwright and director Bernard Bragg has committed $100,000 to  advance theater at Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical  Institute for the Deaf. In his honor, it will be named “The Bernard Bragg Deaf  Theatre Signed Arts and Deaf Cinema Endowment Fund.” The donation will support  scholarships, training, workshops and lectures for deaf and hard-of-hearing  students interested in the performing arts.

Bragg, 77, is a former  artist-in-residence at NTID. His theater career began in the 1950s while he was  a college student at Gallaudet College, in Washington, D.C. Following college,  he studied in Paris with legendary mime Marcel Marceau.

Bragg helped  found the National Theatre of the Deaf in 1967 and has been teaching and  directing at California State University at Northridge since 1998.

In  2001, he received a Special Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Federation  of the Deaf.

“I wish to see deaf people in theatre and film, around the  world, continue to explore and enhance the quality of their creative works,”  Bragg said in a statement. “Deaf theater and film groups have made significant  and impressive contributions not only to their own deaf communities, but also to  the general culture of the greater societies in which they  live.

“Recognition of their extraordinary talents also helps to increase  respect and empowerment.”