Captioned theater comes to Portland
Captioned theater will make its first appearance in Portland in August, when Portland Center for Performing Arts begins offering one captioned showing of each of its seven Broadway musical presentations. The first captioned presentation will be Mamma Mia! Sunday evening, Aug. 28, at 6:30 p.m.
PCPA introduced live captioning to Portland in cooperation with the Oregon Communication Access Project (OR-CAP), a sister organization to Wash-CAP. Like the Washington organization, OR-CAP is a non-profit membership corporation comprised largely of people with significant hearing loss, which has as its purpose expanding access to public facilities for those of us whose hearing loss has made participation in those activities difficult.
PCPA is partnering with the Theatre Development Fund from New York City, which provides financial assistance for start-up captioning efforts. Such assistance is extended on the basis that the theater will continue captioning thereafter. The captioning is actually done by c2net, also from New York, which provides theater captioning at numerous venues around the country, including those Seattle theaters that now offer such performances.
The captions -- dialogue, song lyrics and other aural information -- are prepared in advance, then displayed by a live operator in synch with the pace of that evening's performance. The captions are displayed on a portable LED reader-board placed to one side of the stage. Seats are set aside in an area of the theater from which the caption board and the stage are in the same line of sight, minimizing the need to look back and forth as the patron reads along with the performance.
The captioned performances will all take place at 6:30 p.m. on the final Sunday of each production's run.
Tickets for the captioned performances may be ordered at the box office, 1111 SW Broadway, by calling 503-248-4335 or online at boxoffice@pcpa.com.
Here is the full season:
Mamma Mia! -- Sunday, Aug. 28
Shrek the Musical! -- Sunday, Sept. 18, 6:30 p.m.
West Side Story -- Sunday, Jan. 8, 6:30 p.m.
Beauty and the Beast -- Sunday, Feb. 19, 2012, 6:30 p.m.
Wicked -- Sunday, March 25, 2012, 6:30 p.m.
Million Dollar Quartet -- Sunday, May 27, 2012, 6:30 p.m.
Jersey Boys -- Sunday, Aug. 5, 2012, 6:30 p.m.
"OR-CAP is pleased PCPA is responding in such a positive way to our request for the captioning of live performances," said OR-CAP President David Viers. "This will greatly enhance the theater-going experience for the thousands of us with hearing loss in the Portland Metro area."
