Endless Events: Nick starts today’s topic with relating it to what he knows best – event and experience design. “One of the best aspects of experience design is designing for the most amount of people and learning from it, so you can be more inclusive as you continue to design. One of the things that I’ve heard in the last year is that there was a lot of people who were attending events who hadn’t really attended events before because there were different barriers.”
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The point made in the last paragraph of this article is what stuck out the most to me. I think that even in theatre, we still focus too much on the average user experience. I think especially in pieces with audience interaction, directors think about the audience member that’s the most like them. I don’t like to be surprised with interaction in a play I go to, so when I think about audience interaction, I think about making the performance alright for audience members that want to play and those who don’t. This is the same approach that needs to be taken with accessibility. At least from my time here at CMU, there has been a pretty severe lack of awareness of making productions accessible. Only while I’ve been here have effect warnings gotten more specific to include a larger array of content triggers. We are not very good at keeping our spaces accessible for those with mobility - the tension grid with a ladder instead of stairs is one thing that comes to mind. The biggest thing I’ve noticed since shifting to the digital medium is the lack of captioning. There has got to be an auto-captioning tech that we can integrate into livestreams – Google Meet has auto-captioning, and that's a live video chat.
I truly think theatre is one of the worst forms of entertainment when it comes to accessibility. For the audio impaired live theater cannot provide captioning and asl interpreters for one to either look at what is on the stage or look at the interpreter. Though captioning can happen when theatre is online, like it has been for the past year I wonder if this type of accessibility will still be available when theaters open up. I also think this past year theatre has finally been accessible to lower income people and people who perhaps couldn't afford a ticket to travel to a show. The recording of theater has been a great step forward in making theatre accessible but again, I'm not sure how well that will translate to real life theater when everyone is excited for venues to open up again. My old high school would put on relaxed performances for the nuerodivergent to be able to attend as well as families whose children could not sit through a full show, which is something I think every theater venue should look in to doing because the only way we can spread our art is by making sure we make it accessible for everyone to watch.
This article opened my eyes about a few things. I realized that I, and a lot of other people who I have heard that virtual theater is more accessible, has made the mistake of viewing it from the “average” perspective. I didn’t realize how inaccessible theater actually was to not just those struggling financially but also those whil physical disabilities, mental illness or someone that just doesn’t know how to work technology. They made a good point that if someone was looking lost a stranger would approach them and help, but they don’t have that ability now. Creating theater for people who normally would not be able to fully experience it would be a wonderfully fulfilling challenge . Everyone deserves to experience theater. I’m committed to educate myself more about those things that are holding back people from fully experiencing it. “As a community and as an industry, the more educated we get as to what some of the barriers are, the more pressure can be put on finding solutions for them“
First of all, I don’t think declaring what is ultimately better between the in-person events and the remote events would ever be possible because they both have too distinct advantages and disadvantages. Still, this article made a number of points that I really appreciated. One of those points was where they mentioned not only the physically disability, but also the mental disabilities that certain people would have to go through when having the in-person meetings. I also think that although some people could still be tech-savvy, they need to learn the minimum amount of ways to work with technologies in this kind of era. Not that the virtual meetings are better than the in-person ones, but I still hope that the whole idea of having the virtual meetings or performances to persist even after the end of pandemic. Although the personal preference might differ, I definitely think that it opens up for more audience as the virtual meetings just cancels the limitation of space.
There was an article on a related topic last week, also addressing accessibility in the entertainment world (I believe that one was specifically about Broadway). This article is looking at virtual entertainment and events (not just live theater) versus the in-person gatherings we have been used to pre-COVID. This is such an important conversation to have, in addition to actually taking active steps to create a more accessible space in virtual and live entertainment going forward. Others commented about this as well, but I think the last section makes a very strong point: a lot of this world is designed for the “average” person (what that means likely depends a lot on the circumstances, but this means it will never be flexible enough to accommodate everyone comfortably). And, I think that both virtual and live events need to evolve to accommodate more people- virtual events will be a part of our lives for a long time (even when live entertainment returns), and both modalities of events should be thought about in this discussion.
First and foremost, I think it is so important to listen to the disabled community when it comes to conversations about accessibility in theatre. I recently read my friend’s paper about this very topic and she mentioned how these virtual events are really great because people can stay at home, they don’t have to be quiet, and there are also captions available. Although, it is extremely frustrating that all of these changes and accommodations could’ve been made a long time ago but they only did it when the entire population had to move online. Also, there is a big question as to how long these virtual options will last because people are eager to ditch them in favor for only in person events. While this option does help certain people I hope we don’t just accept that this is the only solution we need. There are so many changes that need to be made in physical theatres to make them more accessible when we are able to go back.
I think that digital events are inherently more inclusive due to the fact that they open these previously exclusive events like theater shows to people who may not have the money, time, or ability to attend in-person events. Despite this stance, I completely understand how it may seem overwhelming or restrictive to those who do not have access to or experience with technology. I feel like because we live in a capitalist society there must always be some kind of exclusivity barrier to these kinds of things, which is unfortunate because in an ideal world anyone could attend anything without worry of restriction. Accessibility is a huge value of mine, so I support the digitization of events within the context of the pandemic, and I hope that digital inclusion continues beyond this pandemic. I feel like that is a high hope though, because the theater industry will want to move back toward its elitist nature that it has had as long as I've known it. Maybe I am a pessimist. I am excited to see how the industry grows if this digitization is included in future productions as a way of including anyone who wants to see the show, not just the people who are able to access it due to standing in society.
I really appreciate what this article is saying. Zoom and all these technologies suddenly became very popular. I feel like there was immediate jump to a certain of way doing things, without an introspective moment to ask ourselves “Does this work for everyone? Is anyone going to be left out?” At CMU, we asked those questions in terms of people in different time zones and asynchronous learning, but I don’t know if we really came up with good solutions to those questions. Regardless, this time of thought was not very present in livestream after livestream of theater productions. However, and this just is the jaded asshole in me, when the article describes people who don’t like technology all I can picture is that image of Abe Simpson yelling at a cloud. Like I understand that my experience with technology, and what I think is commonplace is not true for everyone. Still, how long are we really going to excuse people who refuse to learn how to google something. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for older individuals, who typically make up the majority of theater audiences, suddenly missing out on stuff because they can’t log in to their email.
Live entertainment will always be the worst when it comes to inclusivity and accessibility. Obviously, a remote performance will allow for subtitles, edits to prevent strobe and shocking effects, and allow anyone from seeing it anywhere. Live will always require people to find their own transportation and way to the theater or venue and expect them to figure out how to accommodate their own disabilities. There was a huge issue of this at my high school, as we had a school for deaf and hard of hearing attached to my campus. There was a def actor who would not be cast for parts because he literally could not speak them, or even see in the dark backstage. In addition to that and that our live high school theater did not have subtitles (like most), his mother filed a lawsuit against our theater department. For a play, we were able to accommodate a narration role for him alongside another, and though he was not cast in our musical, moving forward our theater department has set up chrome books for all our productions that will have subtitles that play along with the production.
I had never really thought of accessibility in relation to the theatre and how inaccessible live performance events are. It had never occurred to me how difficult the it is for disabled people to watch a live performance or for dead and blind people to be able to experience live theatre and events. So I understand the point the article is making that zoom and other virtual streaming platforms have made these events so much more accessible to people all over the world. I can now pay for and watch any performance I want around the entire world and I don’t have to pay for travel, room and board as one would have had to do in the past. You can also see theatre and live events in different languages and countries around the word which is very dope for collaboration across the world. But nothing is ever perfect and One must acknowledge the inequities that come out of this such as lack of internet and access to technology.
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