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Theatre Captioning is a form of live subtitling in which the actors' words appear as scrolling text located on a screen(s) located near or on the stage.
Any speech, songs or sound effects are captioned, allowing people who are Deaf, deafened or hard-of-hearing to follow the show. Show lyrics are identified by the presence of musical notes (♪).
Traditionally, stage captioning has been delivered using specialist equipment including pillar box shaped LED units (photo 1). These screens are time-consuming to rig and usually have to be hired from a theatre captioning company given how expensive they are to buy.
A trained captioner cues a pre-prepared script in time to the actors' words. This model works well so long as the actors stick to the script! Often in live performance however, actors improvise and ad lib.
Speech to Text Reporters (STTRs) and Electronic Notetakers (ENTs) are trained to subtitle live, UNSCRIPTED speech in real-time at events. They are, however, rarely trained as theatre captioners. Traditional models of theatre captioning therefore are unable to respond well to the often improvised nature of performance.
The result is that theatre captioners are usually constrained to cueing only the SCRIPTED elements of the show, even when the actor(s) have veered wildly off script, as if often the case with productions like pantos.
- Scripted performances can be delivered in English with translations in multiple languages.
- A transcript of the live performance and any post-show discussion can be provided.
- If a captioned theatre performance is streamed online, a screenshot of the number of patrons accessing the online platform can be provided.
Recent developments in theatre captioning technology have made it easier for captioners to output text to a range of different devices. Depending on the size of the venue, one type of output may be more suitable than another (photos 5 and 6).
Sometimes projections are beamed onto the back wall of the stage as part of the set. Three or more lines of text can be integrated with the projections, with the lines scaled towards the top, middle or bottom of the slides.
- Between 3 and 10 lines of text can be displayed, which may be suited to occasions where the speed of speech is very fast.
- Text and background colours can be amended to suit the "mood" of the production.
- Dedicated software allows the captioner to output extemporaneous speech as well as pre-scripted material.
- Captioners can choose to output one line or one word at a time, to avoid pre-empting jokes and reflect how the lines are delivered.
- Captions can be integrated into the set, to take account of design considerations. The benefit of this is that patrons can read the captions face on, rather than have to glance between the side of the stage and the main action.
Click here for Frequently Asked Questions about booking a Theatre Captioner.
