Title
Captioning puppet theatre
Conference name
Media for All 8
City
Country
Sweden
Modalities
Date
18/06/2019
Abstract
Captioning is a way of making live performances accessible to deaf, deafened and hard of hearing audiences. Having launched this service at the Puppet Theatre Barge (London) in 2016, the author will be showing how the captions are created and launched live or automatically during the performance. Two main different approaches will be explained, one concerns puppet shows aimed at young children and the other one concerns marionette productions aimed at adults and older children. How are the characters identified? What makes puppets different from actors? How are music and sound effects subtitled? The author, trained as an SDH subtitler, will discuss the challenges of captioning theatre performances, drawing from her own personal experience. She will talk about the different stages involved in making a venue more accessible to the deaf, the deafened and the hard of hearing. Besides discussing the work of the captioner from a linguistic and technical point of view, other factors, such as customer care and marketing will be also considered. Finally, the feedback collected from the audiences attending the captioned performances will be shared.
The specific case of captioning at the Puppet Theatre Barge in London will be placed within the wider context of captioning theatre in the UK and in other countries (e.g. Australia, Spain, USA), discussing both open and closed captioning solutions, the pros and cons identified by deaf and hard of hearing theatre goers.
The specific case of captioning at the Puppet Theatre Barge in London will be placed within the wider context of captioning theatre in the UK and in other countries (e.g. Australia, Spain, USA), discussing both open and closed captioning solutions, the pros and cons identified by deaf and hard of hearing theatre goers.