Actor and Mesa native Troy Kotsur will perform the national anthem in American Sign Language at the Super Bowl on behalf of the National Association of the Deaf.
Kotsur’s signing will be part of the pregame entertainment lineup for Super Bowl LVII in Arizona, which will be played at State Farm Stadium on Sunday, Feb. 12, according to a release.
Other pregame entertainment planned includes:
- Musician and songwriter Chris Stapleton will sing the national anthem.
- Colin Denny, a deaf member of the Navajo Nation in Arizona, will sign “America the Beautiful.”
- Recording artist, songwriter and producer, Babyface will sing “America the Beautiful.”
- Emmy-award winning actress Sheryl Lee Ralph will sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
For his work in the movie CODA, Kotsur is the second deaf person ever to win an Oscar, in the category of Best Supporting Actor.
In CODA, he played a deaf father in a deaf family with one hearing daughter. For Kotsur’s performance in this role, he also won Best Supporting Actor awards from BAFTA, the Critics’ Choice, Gotham Awards, Independent Spirit and the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the release states.
He has performed on Broadway in Spring Awakening and in numerous stage productions by Deaf West Theater and the National Theatre of the Deaf. Kotsur was most recently on television acting in the Star Wars series “The Mandalorian,” for which he created the Tusken sign language. The language he created was also used in the show’s spinoff series “The Book of Boba Fett.” He will next appear in a Disney+ series about the California Riverside School for the Deaf football team that recently won the state championship.
