Theatre Development Fund – TDF: Lauren Ridloff was two years old when the original production of Children of a Lesser God debuted on Broadway in 1980, and eight when her parents brought her to see the movie version starring Marlee Matlin, an actress who is deaf, playing a woman named Sarah. It was the first time Ridloff had ever seen a character who was deaf onscreen, let alone one so assertive and assured. "I was inspired," she says, or rather signs, her two hands traveling up her body until her fingers spread out across her shoulders like ten exclamation points which means "inspired" in American Sign Language (ASL.)
2 comments:
I think it’s amazing that there is this technology to make theater more accessible. The GalaPro App sound really interesting. I think for a lot of people it will take some time to get use to letting and encouraging people to use their phone in theater, but if it is allowing people access I don’t think that it should be a problem. Additionally, I think what the article says about designers looking for ways to incorporate open captioning into shows is a really good idea. Opera already utilizers subtitles and I don’t see any reason why theater should not. I’m glad that the Broadway League has stated mandated captioning in all theaters for all shows. I’m interested to see how this technology progresses and what the theaters decide to do. I don’t know how expensive the closed captioning technology is, but hopefully it will soon be cheap enough for regional theaters and smaller community theaters to incorporate.
This article makes me so happy because it shows that with proper time and effort theater can be much more accessible to the deaf community. Even though ideally all theater should be accessible to everyone that is not the case. But I appreciate that especially for a show about bridging the gap between the deaf and hearing communities, the production does a good job of accommodating actors and audience members. Even though it is not addressed in the article, I wonder about how the crew communicates quickly and effectively with the performers, because I would think that is a key aspect of making a production run smoothly. But overall, it makes me happy to see that more and more theaters are paying attention to how they can help patrons and reach the widest possible audience. But also in terms of representation, in TV and film you don’t see very many deaf characters, so I appreciate that some theaters are making the effort.
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