For those that don’t know, my name is Amy and I’m the founder of Living with Hearing loss. I also have severe Hearing loss in both ears and have done since I was a little one!
I first discovered Stagetext as a charity a year and a bit ago and was eager to help and support it, what a brilliant concept ?! Why hadn’t I known about this before?
Perhaps this was because it’s not widely available …
I was intrigued to watch a performance and I managed to finally see for myself the actual benefits of having captions available in the theatre and wow it’s changed me !
During the performance there was a moving song that reduced me to tears, if I hadn’t had the captions I wouldn’t have experienced the full depth of emotion not knowing the full content. There was also a moment of humour said with just one word if I hadn’t of heard that one word I would have missed the whole joke !
There is so much that I have missed over the years of my life watching performances, it’s always been more of a visual experience with cookie bite intake of understanding scripts and lyrics. Music has always moved me and I can follow music pretty well with powerful aids it’s the clarity of the lyrics that I struggle with.
Growing up I would read cover to cover of song lyrics and understand and learn the words to the song and then practice singing … from Mary Poppins as a child to Michael Jackson and to all the pop bands growing up I learnt the words through the lyrics and subtitles through the BBC showings of Top of the Pops.
Subtitles have been my saviour throughout my life for television but always missing at live events so yesterday was an emotional one for me and one I’ll never forget!
Captions are important and captions need to be made more available, I dream of a day when it becomes more widely accepted and a basic requirement to be made available for at least a few showings of every show in the UK.
It’s so simple and isn’t intrusive to the audience (I didn’t feel) please if any theatres are out there considering captions, just do it ! Stagetext will help you with the process . It’s so valuable to the hard-of-hearing and Deaf community! It’s inclusive to all those that love acting and music like me. I’ve always appreciated a live performance and the effort that goes into the performance.
If you would like to see a captioned live performance please head along to see Stagetexts listings of shows near you .https://www.stagetext.org/whats-on/
And if you’re a theatre wanting to include the deaf and hard of hearing community into your audience do it now by contacting Stage text via this link : https://www.stagetext.org/for-venues/theatre-captioning/