30% of audience members find captions helpful

A recent survey by the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich has found that nearly a third of the audience at captioned shows make use of the service and find it helpful.

The theatre, which provides captioning in-house, programmed five captioned performances in its Spring 2010 season ranging from comedy and drama to two musicals. Every deaf and hearing patron was given a card before the captioned performance which said: “If you found this evening’s captions useful, please place this card in the ushers’ buckets on your way out at the end of the performance, otherwise please leave them on your seat.”

At a captioned performance of Up on The Roof and Signs of a Star-Shaped Diva, with just over 200 people in the audience, almost 30% and 43% of patrons said they found the captions helpful. For Noises Off, the fast-moving comedy, nearly 22.5% of the total audience placed the cards in the buckets.

“This has been a very interesting and useful experiment as we have always been convinced that more audience members use the captions than declare, particularly in terms of the feedback received following the two musicals, which is great, as the New Wolsey is known for its actor musician musicals. We plan to continue this experiment in our autumn season as I am especially interested in seeing the response to our rock and roll pantomime. We are very proud of our increase in assisted performances, and it's great to prove that a wide audience is using it also.“

For information on captioned performances at the New Wolsey, please contact Kelly Kirkbride, Access Officer.

Article First Published: 10/06/2010

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