I had the opportunity recently to experience Romeo and Juliet at American Players Theatre. This was one of the coolest productions I have had the pleasure of seeing. The amazingly talented actor who played Romeo was Deaf and used ASL. They produced the show in such a way that hearing audience members could understand, ASL users could understand, and they even had captioning for people like me who are neither hearing nor Deaf.

I have long loved live theatre. Invite me to a play or a musical and I am there. Enjoying theatre with single sided deafness has been a challenge. I have found that I really need to do my homework and research in advance to have a successful outcome.

For example, I have found that the Overture Center for Performing Arts has absolutely no captioning of any kind available. Meanwhile a comparable theatre, the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center, always has open captioning for Saturday matinee Broadway shows and offers GalaPro app captioning for all Broadway shows. So it is important to check your options in advance and reach out to accessibility services.

At the theatre, I typically use my hearing aid telecoil function to essentially blue tooth the microphone on the stage to my hearing aid for plays. I find that for music/ musicals this is not useful as it is way too loud for comfort.

I use my phone to hook to the telecoil system so I was excited that at American Players Theatre they offered tablets with the GalaPro captioning app as well as stands. That way I could listen through my aid and look at the captions to fill in any missing blanks (which I needed from time to time with Shakespearean English). The extremely friendly and helpful staff in the assistance booth said that using the GalaPro app took some real effort as the producer had to load the entire script into the app. I hope they get enough positive feedback to consider offering this on a regular basis. This year just Romeo and Juliet was captioned. American Players Theatre always offers their telecoil and headset system at shows.

At the performance of Rome and Juliet, I noticed that a solid chunk of the audience were ASL users. I also saw many people using captioning devices like I did. It was amazing to see such an elegant blending of accessibility. People with hearing loss often feel unwelcome and left out of live theatre, so this experience of welcome and comfort was a real joy.

Romeo and Juliet is still playing this weekend ( October 7) at American Players Theatre if you want to experience this phenomenal experience yourself.

https://americanplayers.org/plays/romeo-juliet