Oregon Shakespeare Festival to Become Totally Accessible
The renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival has developed plans that, when fully implemented, will make it the nation’s most accessible live theater for people with hearing loss. OSF will schedule 20 captioned drama presentations in the 2011 season, almost doubling its scheduled captioned offerings in 2010. But even better, OSF hopes to be able to offer open captioning on request (once the captions are completed) for any of its plays, given adequate notice.
Those plans were unveiled at a mid-October meeting involving OSF’s Executive Director Paul Nicholson, Access Coordinator Jim Amberg and Audience Service Manager Radawna Wallace, Oregon Communication Access Project (OR-CAP) Vice President Clark Anderson and me, representing both OR-CAP and the Washington State Communication Access Project (Wash-CAP).
OSF is located in Ashland, Oregon, a lovely but remote small town located almost equidistant between Sacramento, California and Portland, Oregon. It draws patrons from throughout the nation, but most come from California, Oregon and Washington. Unlike patrons at a typical live theater in a major city like Seattle, patrons don’t tend to go to Ashland multiple times during a season. Rather, they go for a long weekend or a full week, and see a number of plays, often two per day.
For the 2010 season, OSF prepared captions for nine of its 11 different plays, but only offered 11 total captioned showings sprinkled throughout the season. On behalf of OR-CAP and Wash-CAP members who wished to enjoy a “full-immersion” Ashland experience, we began communicating with OSF officials early in 2010, asking for an arrangement that would better suit Ashland’s unusual situation.
On our visit in October, we learned that OSF has brought the captioning function in house. All its scripts are available electronically. Once the director has put the play into final form, Amberg and Wallace get busy converting the production script into bite-sized captions, an exacting and labor-intensive process. When that is done, the captions are loaded into a computer, and an on-site operator “performs” the captions in synch with the pace of that particular performance.
As is the case with the captioned theater presentations in Seattle, the captions are displayed on an LED reader-board placed in front of the stage at one side. Patrons requesting captions are seated in areas from where both the captions and the stage are visible in the same line of sight. The seats are offered at the price of OFS’s least-expensive tickets.
The thrust of our discussions with OSF was about the obstacles, if any, to re-using the prepared captions for multiple performances. Our visit disclosed that OSF is thinking along the same lines, and is looking to hire additional technicians familiar enough with both the play itself and the captioning equipment to handle performance captioning. Once that is done, OSF’s plan is to offer captioning upon request any time after the captions are ready.
As usual, OSF’s 2011 season includes a number of Shakespearean plays, together with more modern dramas. An unusual feature for 2011 is the inclusion of a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, the first time OSF has undertaken a musical presentation.
The scheduled captioned performances will be clustered in 2011 to provide patrons needing captions with the opportunity to enjoy multiple productions during their visit. More information about each play will be available when OSF formally announces its schedule and begins ticket sales.
Here is OSF’s announced schedule of captioned performances for the 2011 season:
March 31, 1:30 – Measure for Measure
April 1, 8:00 – The Language Archive
April 2, 1:30 – The Imaginary Invalid
May 18, 8:00 – Julius Caesar
May 19, 1:30 – To Kill a Mockingbird
May 20, 8:00 – The Imaginary Invalid
May 31, 1:30 – August: Osage County
July 21, 8:30 – The Pirates of Penzance
July 22, 1:30 – Ghost Light
July 22, 8:30 – Love’s Labor Lost
July 23, 8:30 – Henry IV, Part II
Sept 1, 8:00 – Henry IV, Part II
Sept. 2, 8:00 – The Pirates of Penzance
Sept. 3, 8:00 – Love’s Labor Lost
Sept. 4, 1:30 – The African Company Presents Richard III
Oct. 18, 1:30 – The African Company Presents Richard III
Oct. 19, 1:30 – Measure for Measure
Oct 20, 8:00 – Ghost Light
Oct. 21, 1:30 – Julius Caesar
Oct. 22, 8:00 – August, Osage County
Tickets are available by email, boxoffice@osfashland.org. Patrons purchasing tickets in the captioned section should state that they do need captioned seating. More information is available online at http://www.osfashland.org/plays/access.aspx.
OSF’s hope is that once one captioned performance of each play has been presented, subsequent performances may be available with captions upon request. Some advance notice will be required, because many of OSF’s performances sell out, and the seats set aside for those requesting captions will need to be released for purchase by others.
Because the additional display technicians are not yet selected and trained, OSF cannot formally commit to on-request captioning of unscheduled performances for 2011, but will attempt to make such performances available on a test basis in 2011. If that proves feasible, it would then formally offer on-request captioning in 2012, becoming perhaps the most accessible venue in America for people with hearing loss.
OSF will also present nine ASL-interpreted performances in 2011, on the following schedule:
May 27, 8:00 – Measure for Measure
May 28, 8:00 – August: Osage County
May 29, 1:30 – To Kill a Mockingbird
July 14, 8:30 – The Pirates of Penzance
July 15, 8:30 – Love’s Labor Lost
July 16, 8:30 – Henry IV, Part II
Oct. 14, 8:00 – The African Company Presents Richard III
Oct. 15, 8:00 – The Imaginary Invalid
Oct. 16, 1:30 – Julius Caesar
We are excited about OSF’s commitment to access, and look forward to joining audiences from throughout the West and across the nation in enjoying OSF’s outstanding offerings.
