New measures will allow hearing-and visually-impaired people to follow the plots of plays at The Edge. Joanna Davies investigates.

Rebeccah Curtis signs us into the theatre. There's no announcement for us to take our seats. Instead, Ms Curtis tells us in sign language.

"Interpreting scripts for the hearing-impaired can be challenging because, in a lot of spoken English plays, the humour is made by playing with words, so we have to find a way to translate that humour for deaf people," she says.

Ms Curtis is an interpreter working with The Edge on its new Signal venture, a scheme that aims to make theatre enjoyable for hearing and visually impaired people.

For selected plays, one performance of the season will have audio-description headsets available or sign language interpreters on stage.

"We've just done sign language translation for The Brothers Size and one of the challenges is having interpreting but without [it] being a distraction for the actors on stage," says Ms Curtis. "The actors have been really happy to have us working with them."

Interpreted theatre is the idea of The Edge's public programmes producer, Bronwyn Bent.

"These performances happen in a lot of other places overseas and ...

people always respond to them positively," she says. "Since we get council funding as well, it is important that we serve as much of the community as we can."

As well as the sign language interpretation of The Brothers Size, which was performed on June 1, an audio description performance of the North Shore Theatre Company's Miss Saigon will be staged on June 7.

Signal's programme coordinator, Stephanie Burt-Andrews, is talking to theatre groups to see if more interpreted shows can be arranged. She says The Edge and Auckland Theatre Company already have an audio-described performance of Calendar Girls scheduled in August.

"We are looking at more script ideas and, sometimes, I suggest a script to Rebeccah and she has a look over it ... But some are more difficult than others."

Sign hear

The next event on Signal's calendar is an audio-described session of Miss Saigon on Tuesday,  June 7, at 7.30pm. Contact The Edge. Fifty seats are allocated to have headsets for the show. Book these by emailing: groups@the-edge.co.nz

For more information, see www.the-edge.co.nz

Source:

http://www.theaucklander.co.nz/living/news/taking-sign-language-to-the-edge/3953976/

Joanna Davies | 2nd June 2011