HowlRound Theatre Commons: Immersive theatre presents unique challenges to providing accommodation and accessibility measures for audience members, particularly in “sandbox-style” immersive theatre in which audience members roam through a curated environment throughout the performance. The physical and transitory nature of this form creates a significant roadblock to offering typical access options like listening devices, closed captioning, and wheelchair accessibility.
5 comments:
I found this article very interesting. Inclusivity and accessibility are issues which are very important to me, so I enjoyed reading this article and hearing what changes can be made to make immersive theatre more accessible. I really appreciated that in the beginning the author started by stating the fact that legally, under the Americans with Disabilities Act, all public accommodations Are required to meet ADA requirements. This is a fact that honestly a lot of people don't know, I have found myself before raising concerns about accessibility to which people will just respond “then those people shouldn't just just go to it”. Accessibility is already an issue in lots of normal theaters and becomes even a further issue in these immersive theatre spaces if they are multi floor and heavily active. I liked reading this author's recommendations and what stuck with me the most was this, “The difference between something that is designed for access and something that has been adapted for access is always abundantly clear on the receiving end.” This is very true and I think that this is something that everybody, especially all creators, needs to hear and understand.
I was really fascinated by this article, and it made me think about a lot of different accessibility issues in immersive theater. For example, the issue of the audience designation masks interfering with glasses would never have crossed my mind, but it’s pretty obviously a situation that conflicts with ADA requirements. I definitely agree with the author’s point that a lot of smaller, independent productions tend to slip under the radar and don’t have ADA requirements monitored and mandated. In general, conflicts with ADA requirements are an unfortunately common reality within our world. I thought it was interesting how the author mentioned that immersive productions tend to not be unionized because Actor’s Equity doesn’t really have guidelines for immersive productions built into their rulebook. Immersive theater has been becoming increasingly popular over recent years, and I feel like the success and popularity of Sleep No More (which I felt like was the first really “mainstream” immersive theatrical performance I was hearing about) showcases how popular this form of theater has become. Hopefully, AEA will move to include immersive performances under their umbrella to provide stricter regulation of ADA requirements, and encourage more immersive productions to accommodate for a wide range of disabilities in their audience members.
This article speaks on something super important being accessibility in immersive theatre. It’s so true that shows like Sleep No More often don’t consider things like sensory-friendly environments or mobility needs upfront. Even at the Golden Globes earlier this month, the stage wasn't wheelchair accessible, discouraging many disabled individuals from attending the award show. For example, someone like Marrisa Bode, who plays Nessarose, wouldn't have even been able to go up on stage with her casemates to celebrate their box office win. The part in this article about how audience identifiers and the lack of seating create barriers really stuck with me—it’s such a simple fix, but it’s rarely addressed. I also liked the more personal touches, like the glasses-under-the-mask issue. It’s a very small example, but it highlights how easily people can be excluded. The various suggestions, like glow tape and sensory-friendly performances, feel super doable and would make a huge difference. I also think we as a community just need to be more understanding especially with the rise of actual disabled people playing roles of disabled people since it wasn't always like that.
Accessibility in theatre is something I think about a lot. As the article mentions, a lot of venues view accessibility only within the context of wheelchair users, an approach which fails to acknowledge the needs of many audience members. I was surprised when reading this article to see that both immersive experiences discussed had issues with patrons who wear glasses! The fact that participants with glasses were in Sleep No More told to stuff tissues into their masks was so incredibly frustrating to see, especially given that so many people wear glasses and finding an alternative solution—like letting people with glasses wear the mask on their foreheads—really should not be too difficult. This article also sheds light on an aspect of immersive theatre that makes it logistically very different from traditional theatre, which is that the audience and the actors are sharing the same space. In a traditional theatrical environment, actors are the only people who interact with the set during the performance itself, and they already know how to navigate it safely. The accessibility needs of the actors (if any) are limited and knowable, as opposed to the needs of a hypothetical audience, who in many cases could also be drunk.
This article was fascinating to me in many ways. One was the fact that I hadn’t really thought about immersive theatre in the way that the two performances were described. I had typically thought of locations without actors where the sensory experience was the focus of the space and not necessarily the story. In those instances I can see it being easier to provide differing spaces that would create a similar sensory experience using different methods as a form of accessibility, along with those relaxed days that were mentioned in the article. For the performances in the article what is said about needing to focus on inclusivity from the beginning makes a lot of sense as with narrow halls and performances up the stairs it’s harder to create an equitable space after the fact. I was also rather surprised at the masks and the fact they did not have ones that fit over glasses. I was also surprised that exits and directions to the safe space of the bar were not clearly marked as I feel like there are ways to mark directions even if having the standard signs were too much for the production.
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