Access all areas

It was a Saturday afternoon in May and we were all taking part in one of the National’s regular “touch tours”. This time, some 40 blind and visually impaired people and their companions handled costumes and props (including plastic kidneys and bacon rashers from a silver breakfast tureen), tried flopping on the sofas and got a sense of the scope and style of the set. Then there was just time to grab a quick lunch before picking up head sets at the information desk. The matinee that day would be “audio described”, the neat infra-red Sennheiser head sets providing a live evocation of the action along with the dialogue.

Among the visitors were Sharon Grennan, her black Labrador, Phoebe, and her friends Andy Howard and Lucy Farrar, all touch tour regulars. Andy had been particularly impressed by the War Horse tour when participants were raised up on the Olivier revolve and introduced to the intricacies of the horse puppets: “You could have no idea what they were like without touching them. And sometimes you even pick up a tip that sighted people don’t.” Sharon opted to take Phoebe into the theatre, where she settled down for a nap, while front-of-house staff treated some of the other guide dogs to a walk.

Everything seems to work like clockwork on these occasions: trained staff are on hand throughout and every moment has been meticulously planned. Achieving this level of fluidity calls on the experience and expertise of many NT staff. The person who oversees the NT’s Access strategy and ensures that it is a priority throughout the organisation is Ros Hayes. She is generally there at audio-described performances and captioned ones for the deaf and hard of hearing, answering queries, greeting regulars and new patrons, checking head sets, offering an arm or guiding guests to the accessible toilets or cafés. But this is merely the visible part of her job. Behind the scenes she keeps up with, for instance, changes in legislation, and sits at the centre of a network of committed NT employees.

The touch tour participants that day in May would have booked their tickets through the Box Office. Craig Carruthers, a member of the Box Office staff, works closely with Jane Fletcher in Marketing, gradually building up a list of people who require information or assistance. Tickets for audio-described and captioned performances – most productions will have two or three of each of these – are allocated according to optimum positions in the first rows, with a few seats held at the back for those who can’t manage steps. (Needless to say, all three NT theatres have wheelchair spaces for all performances as well, including two recently added in the Olivier.) All except £10 Travelex tickets are at the concessionary price of £15.

About a week before an audio-described performance, participants receive a CD, recorded in the NT’s own sound studio, providing programme notes about the play, the creative team, the characters, the set and style of the production. This is repeated live through the head sets in the 15 minutes before the beginning of the performance. Jane Fletcher will also have sent out information, such as cast lists, in large-print format or Braille.

At the National, there are two audio describers at any of these performances. Tony McBride, sitting in the director’s box at the back of the auditorium, began the description of London Assurance, handing over to Roz Chalmers after the interval. These are two of the seasoned group of freelance describers trained by the National and working here regularly. They read from a script arrived at by a painstaking process to give just such information as is essential without obscuring dialogue and avoiding, as far as humanly possible, clashing with audience laughter – of which there was plenty during London Assurance. It can be especially frustrating for visually impaired theatregoers to hear hoots for which there is no trigger in the script; the describer must fill in swiftly an idea of the grimace or stage business which has given rise to the hilarity.

A describer will visit the set with a stage manager, see a production, and then work on a script while watching a DVD of it. The result is tried out at a “dry run” during which another describer, and director Maria Oshodi, listen and comment at a post-show debriefing. Maria appreciates describing as a consumer, but she is also director of theatre company Extant. She regards certain basic things to do with action, gesture and the appearance of set and characters as essential. She acknowledges that describers generally attempt to be neutral, to avoid interpretation, but their decisions can sometimes lead to interesting discussion. Race is a case in point. Maria says, “You can be deprived of information through political correctness. Is it important to know that an actor is black? I think it is. Also, in an all-black cast you want to know about different skin tones. Characters might be mixed race. I’m mixed race and it’s important to me to know.” As a practitioner, Maria has a particular approach, preferring, for instance, to avoid touch tours as for her they “destroy the fourth wall”.

For the hearing impaired, two kinds of amplification are available: in all three theatres, the Sennheiser infra-red audio and a personal neck loop for those using hearing aids. For outdoor performances, such as this summer’s Square2 productions, Contego’s head set and wireless assisted listening devices work with or without the wearer’s hearing aid. These can be useful on other occasions too, such as backstage tours. The National has 180 Sennheiser head sets, which are available on request from the information desks: they were issued 15,000 times last year alone.

Few people realise that captioning is also live, delivered moment-by-moment by the same team who provide audio description. Before the relevant performance, participants will have received a synopsis prepared by the Publications department. They are allocated seats with a clear view of both stage and caption screens, of which there are usually two. Positioning these, on either side of the stage, is straightforward in the Olivier and Lyttelton; the Cottesloe, where seating configuration alters according to production, poses more of a challenge. Roz Chalmers remembers traverse productions there, where the audience sit on either side of the action. Caption screens were placed so that they could be read beyond the action.

The screens, designed by Stagetext, contain three lines at a time (in yellow on a black background – proved to be the clearest and least tiring colour to read), broken according to the actor’s pauses, carefully noted in the same painstaking way the audio describers prepare their scripts. Three lines allow for just enough information at a time without requiring a screen to be too unwieldy. The captioner, working in the director’s box on a lap-top equipped with special software, responds to unexpected changes: this is, after all, live theatre. Symbols indicate sound effects: a crotchet for music, with the name of the piece or an indication of style and mood – as discussed in advance with the stage manager. Roz Chalmers says that the average number of lines in an NT script is 42,500 – so that is the number of times she releases a line by hand.

Ben Steinitz, the National’s audio engineer, maintains all the equipment and infrastructure to support audio-described and captioned performances, as well as the infra red audio systems used daily in the NT’s theatres. He is interested in the latest developments in the area of Access, including a system involving individual caption screens and translation into several languages. Meanwhile, as The Habit of Art prepares to go on tour, the current equipment will be loaded up and sent to each venue where captioned and audio-described performances are a regular part of the NT’s visit. Fourteen are scheduled for this autumn’s tour.

Loss of sight or hearing are obvious disadvantages in a theatre. Other kinds of need might not be so easy to spot and cater for, so front-of-house staff are asked to be on the alert for anyone who requires help. Some develop particular skills related to Access, including signing, and all receive specific training delivered by DeafWorks and Action for the Blind. These are two of the organisations with which the NT engages. Shape is another. A disability-led arts organisation which promotes inclusion for audience members, develops opportunities for disabled artists, and offers training, it inspires collaborators with a wealth of ideas.

Among the NT’s own personnel, both those recruiting staff and those leading plans for future changes to the building keep Access very much at the top of the agenda.

All this seems to have paid off in the most tangible way: national and local recognition are represented by awards discreetly displayed in a small hospitality room. But perhaps some regular users of the NT’s Access facilities – a few of the 20,000 disabled audience members and their companions who have visited during the past year – should have the last word. Dr Denham Wright, attending the London Assurance touch tour with his wife, regularly travels from Wolverhampton. He says: “We plan our holidays around days like this!” Richard Lee, as Director of the Jerwood Space, is a theatre professional who attends captioned performances. He says of the NT’s Access policy: “There’s a genuine concern here for the varied needs of theatregoers and other users of the building, reflected in the technological resources, attention to detail – treating patrons as individuals – and a sense that this is an endeavour that will constantly have to be worked at.” Mike Theobald was deprived of theatre by deafness before the NT began to introduce captioning about 10 years ago: “It’s changed my life” he says after enjoying a performance of The Habit of Art. His next visit is already planned.

© Heather Neill, June 2010
Heather Neill is a freelance critic and theatre writer.
 
nationaltheatre.org.uk/access