The glasses, which GalaPro in launching in partnership with Epson, rely on the same technology as the GalaPro app, allowing the user to view captions in real time within the lenses. The glasses are currently in a testing phase at Shubert theaters.
Thursday, January 30, 2020
GalaPro tests out smart glasses with live captions on Broadway
The glasses, which GalaPro in launching in partnership with Epson, rely on the same technology as the GalaPro app, allowing the user to view captions in real time within the lenses. The glasses are currently in a testing phase at Shubert theaters.
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Okay, I was literally JUST discussing this with my friend. I have the worst trouble hearing and understanding (especially when accents are in play), and I cannot watch television without closed captioning. It makes movie theater and live theatre outings ridiculously frustrating. A lot of times, I won’t have understood the plot of the play or movie until I go research it online afterwards. That’s why I am mostly drawn in by visuals, like set designs and dancing. Anyway, I saw My Fair Lady on Broadway awhile ago and literally got NOTHING from the show. The fact that I can’t usually hear anyway mixed in with the thick accents was just a nightmare. The Met actually has screens in front of you (behind the seat that’s in front of you) for operas that show live translations into English of what’s going on, so this definitely is not a new concept, but I think a wider spread use of them would be awesome.
I think these caption glasses are a fantastic idea. I personally have trouble hearing and actually understanding words spoken or songs performed on stage. Especially with rap music or fast-paced songs. Sometimes, actors don’t enunciate as much as they should or I’m just not able to hear clearly from where I’m sitting. I believe these smart classes would work way better than looking at captions on your phone because then you don’t need to split your attention between your phone and the stage.
On a more important note, I think these smart glasses would make theater more accessible too. It could improve the theater experience of audiences with hearing problems. Moreover, they could help facilitate productions performed in a foreign language. In Hong Kong, when productions come as part of their international tour (like Wicked and Lion King), there would always be subtitles at the top or on the sides of the proscenium. With these glasses, audiences could overcome the language barrier much easier when watching productions!
Shows like “Come From Away” is super challenging for non-native English speakers like me. There are two main reasons: a) it is hard to learn the story in advance, unlike Disney musicals which people can prepare by watching movies, b) the story progresses during the songs with fast tempo and lots of words, which makes the audience hard to catch up with the story once they get lost. “Come From Away” was one of the most touching musical I have ever seen, and the first impression I had after the show was that I was so glad to have enough English ability to understand the show and be moved. The smart glasses will certainly increase the accessibility, as Cilia mentions above, which would open up chances for people to interact with amazing shows!
Apropos, I have read several articles about this kind of product, but I feel like different companies and organizations have been testing for years. I wonder if there are any competitions in the market.
I am all about making more of an effort to make theatre and the experience of seeing live theatre more accessible to a wider range of audiences. When I saw the picture of the small iPhones next to the audience members chairs, I was personally not sold, as I feel that the physical experience of having to look up and down causes audience members to miss certain aspects of the theatre that are supposed to be watched, as well as heard. However, I think these glasses are so cool as they solve that problem. With caption glasses, audience members who are possibly deaf, hard of hearing, or non - native English speakers would feel as connected to the piece as an audience member who is abled or English speaking. As someone who's first language is English, I would be interested in testing out this new technology to see if it is at all distracting or accurately depicts what is going on on stage.
Wow, technology today is so cool. I think this is a great idea for both people hard of hearing and for non-native speakers. If there are things like this that companies can do to increase access to theatre than I am all for it. Like Elena, when I saw the picture of the phones next to the person, I also thought that it could take away from the show for that people because they have to keep looking down next to them to know what’s going on. These glasses would change that because they could watch the show and the captions would be right there. I am interested in how this actually looks for the person wearing them. Do the captions block the show at all? Are they constantly moving their eyes around to see the show and read the captions? I would also be interested in seeing how this works for translating into other languages.
Upon reading the title of this article in the list, I was filled with immediate joy. I grew up going to watch shows, and when my dad would come along, he would never get to enjoy the show the same way I did because he is hard of hearing. He is a lover of the arts, and was moved by action, scenery, costumes, and occasional dialogue, but he never got the important takeaways because he couldn’t hear the entire story. I remember a couple of years ago, we went and watched Bandstand on Broadway, and there was a monitor to the side of the proscenium opening both stage left and stage right with the dialogue and song lyrics playing along with the show. This was the first time he had ever been able to fully experience a show, and walked out of the theatre bubbling with excitement because he was able to talk with me about the show! With technological advances in recent years, the fact that shows are becoming more inclusive for those with disabilities absolutely warms my heart, because the art that these people put out deserves to be seen and understood by all, not just those who can hear it. Also, the fact that there’s an ability for these glasses to translate the captions in real time opens so many people up to hearing moving stories. It’s wonderful. I can only hope that these glasses hit many theaters. And someday, maybe it’ll move from Broadway and trickle into regional or community theatre as a normally available accommodation.
I absolutely love seeing articles like these pop up on here. I've read about 3 articles now about these smart caption glasses, and I have yet to change my mind on the fact that this is simply an incredible idea. I firmly believe that art should be accepting of people from all walks of life. I don't exactly remember reading about any language-translating features before this article, but again, I think it's an amazing idea and a great way to incorporate technology into the arts. My grandpa understands very basic English, but he still absolutely loves to go out and see live productions at my high school as well as in the Dr. Philips performing arts center in Orlando, regardless of whether or not he can completely understand what they're saying. Bringing a language-translating feature to the classes would not only help people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing but also people who simply are not native-English speakers, such as my grandpa and I think that is amazing. I'm all for including all sorts of people in the world of fine arts.
Again, I will literally talk about these glasses every dang time an article about them pops up on this news feed. I also sometimes have an absolutely awful time hearing or understanding people in live theatre - whether because of bad sound balancing, accents, etc. - despite the fact that I consider myself to be pretty fluent in my native tongue (which is, frankly, not something that one can say about all native English speakers). I, for whatever reason, had never considered the possibility of use by non-native English speakers which is a really interesting use of these glasses in addition to use by hard of hearing people. I have heard of numerous different softwares that translate aurily in real time and, honestly, it seems as though it would probably be easier to do with text given that a script could literally just be scanned in and run through Google Translate (though I’d hope that there is slightly more thought put into the process than that).
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