Oregon Shakespeare Festival Makes Upcoming Season Fully Accessible
The nationally renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival is making its 2012 season fully accessible for people with hearing loss by scheduling 24 open-captioned performances and ten signed performances. Better yet, OSF will make unscheduled performances accessible upon request, provided that seats are still available in the captioned sections.
The captions are prepared in advance in-house, and are displayed in two or three line increments on a portable LED board. Seats are blocked out in areas from which the action on stage and the captions can be seen in the same line of sight. A live operatore advances the captions in synch with the pace of the performace, enabling us to read along and "hear" the dialogue with our eyes.
OSF is also clustering its captioned performances into five separate blocks. This was done in part at the request of the Oregon Communication Access Project (OR-CAP). We noted that because of OSF's remote location in the lovely town of Ashland, Oregon, patrons don't generally make multiple visits in a season. Rather, they go once or twice, stay for several days, and see a number of plays. The clustering arrangement makes it possible for those of us who need captioning to enjoy the festival in the same manner as our friends and families.
Tickets in the captioned section are available at a discount, but the patrons must specify that they want to have tickets in the captioned section. Otherwise, they might be given seats from which the captions are not readily visible. The tickets may be ordered over the telephone or online at boxoffice@osfashland.org.
As usual, OSF's 11-play schedule is a mix of Shakespeare, works by other well-known playwrights, and new works.
The cluster dates for captioned performances are:
March 29-31 for Romeo and Juliet, Animal Crackers, The White Snake and Seagull.
May 10-13 for Romeo and Juliet, Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella, Seagull, The White Snake and Troilus and Cressida.
July 26-29 for The Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa, As You Like It, Party People, Henry V and Animal Crackers.
Sept. 7-9 for Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa, As You Like It, All the Way and Henry V.
Oct. 18-20 for Party People, Troilus and Cressida, All the Way, Romeo and Juliet and Animal Crackers.
The clusters for sign-interpreted performances are:
April 26-30 for Animal Crackers, The White Snake and Romeo and Juliet.
July 12-14 for Henry V, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa, and As You Like It.
Sept. 21-23 for Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella, All the Way and Party People.
OSF regularly draws patrons from throughout the country, and particularly from Oregon, Washington and California. Despite the economic downturns, 2010 and 2011 were two of OSF's most successful seasons -- well over 90% of all available tickets were sold, and some plays were sold out for their entire runs. For that reason, it is never too early to order tickets.
OSF has been an absolute joy to work with on improving access for people with hearing loss. For those of us who have abandoned live theater, this is a great opportunity to participate once again.
