Psst, She's Melting
With its melting witches, flying monkeys and gallons of green paint, "Wicked" relies heavily on visual pizazz. But a new device called D-Scriptive makes it possible to enjoy the experience even if you can't see it, by delivering real-time narrations to sight-impaired theatergoers. In the past, that service was performed live by individual narrators, but the process was cumbersome and all but prohibitively expensive.
The recorded D-Scriptive narration, however, is ready to go at every performance. The system works through the same computer that handles a show's lighting and sound cues, said Carl Tramon, director of special services at Sound Associates, which developed the technology. Each of the more than 500 brief descriptions is triggered when a light or sound technician punches in a particular cue, so the narration keeps pace with the action onstage.
Mr. Tramon said he watched the show a few dozen times - sometimes with his eyes closed - and compiled a narrative describing some sort of visual effect, from set changes to pyrotechnic displays to dance sequences, every 5 to 10 seconds.
The next step was finding the right narrator. After auditioning several actors who took it upon themselves to reanimate Elphaba, Glinda and the rest of the cast, Mr. Tramon cast himself. "They're doing a great job of bringing it to life onstage," he said of the "Wicked" cast. "All you have to do is convey the information."
Buoyed by the response from sight-impaired audience members (and from their companions who are relieved of description duty) since the "Wicked" D-Scriptive made its debut in the spring, Sound Associates unveiled a "Mamma Mia!" recording over the Labor Day weekend, with "Hairspray" due in the next few weeks.
1 comment:
Audio Description is a pretty common practice... and not that expensive at all, past the initial capital expense. We provide audio description for at least one performance in every run, and plan on expanding that once we open our new performing arts center. It's cool that it's always available though, and that it's run through the system... but this can cause some inaccuracies if something were to change in the performance on any given night (it is live theater!) The importance of that live description (or captioning for the deaf) is something that advocates for people with disabilities are pretty adamate about.
But it is great that Wicked is really trying to reach out to the community in this way... it seems the Wicked company is really open to new ideas and new ways of thinking.
- lindsay
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