Darcel Rockett
On an October evening a small crowd of theater-goers get to meet Christopher Boone, the central character of the play, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” at Steppenwolf Theatre Company.
He wears a white polo, navy pants and white tennis shoes.
He speaks with a Received Pronunciation accent (more of a BBC English style where the letter T is more pronounced and consonants sound harder).
And his posture? Christopher stands upright with a rigid posture and a neutral stance would be hands clasped at waist level.
Terry Bell, the actor who portrays Christopher, shares such descriptions, alongside fellow actors, because this pre-show is for audience members who have a disability — the majority have low vision or are legally blind. Bridget Melton, an audio describer, graced the stage earlier to describe to the attendees the stage’s layout (minimalist and abstract) and the props that factor in onstage. The visually impaired patrons can walk the stage before showtime and feel the props to help better understand the subtleties in the performance. When they hear the performance described through a provided headset, they can follow along without missing a beat.
Touch tour before the show
Evan Hatfield, Steppenwolf’s director of audience experience, guides the actors in a conversation with the attendees, so they can paint a picture in their mind of who these characters are and familiarize themselves with their voices.
“The pre-performance program is called a touch tour and it’s a service for people on the vision-loss spectrum, which is pretty broad,” Hatfield said. “What this program tries to do is really provide context for the people at the play and focus on the visual elements that help tell the story, and that includes the props, lights, set, and actors and not just what they sound like, but how they make decisions on what they wear, it’s all part of how they tell their stories. Our program gives them access to information so they can have as full of an experience as possible.”
It’s a service that Pamela Berman, 54, appreciates. The Bowmanville resident with retinitis pigmentosa (a degenerative eye disease that causes severe vision impairment) said she tries to go to the theater at least once a month and looks for such accessibility options, otherwise she doesn’t come back to the theater. With her seeing-eye dog Gumbo, Berman said such services allow her to go out by herself to enjoy a night of theater without having to sit and wait to go with someone.
Theater-goer Jerry Eichengreen can relate. The Highland Park mother goes to about five plays a year with her son Daniel. Daniel is on the autism spectrum and while he loves watching sports with his father, attending plays (musicals and comedies are his favorites) is an activity Daniel shares with his mom.
“The arts are part of the soul,” she said. “We try to expose Daniel to as many experiences that we possibly can and see what he likes so anything you do to ultimately further the comfort of people with autism, you’re going to further the comfort of everyone, so I think it’s a wonderful thing that theaters are now becoming sensitive to.”
These kinds of tours are one spoke in a wheel of services to make art accessible to patrons with disabilities within Chicago’s theater community. Mobility issues? Wheelchair accessibility. Hard of hearing? American Sign Language-interpreted performances, complimentary assistive hearing devices, and performances with open-captioning are all available. Are you a patron with low vision? There are Playbills in Braille, large print and audio formats at the ready. And sensory-friendly performances for those who may be sensitive to certain experiences such as bright lights or loud noises.
City theaters provide services to make it possible for everyone who wants to come to be there, including Lookingglass, Goodman, Chicago Shakespeare, Second City, TimeLine, and Victory Gardens — which has 25 years of access services and artistic programming under its belt.
“I have to give a shout out to Chicago’s theater community right now,” Hatfield said. “There’s like 40 theater companies of all scales who are offering this programming and not just the big theaters – tons of storefront theaters who are doing this – all these tiny little spaces are offering a really sophisticated level of programming and that is the best part of Chicago.”
Ready to help
David Chu’s company, c2, specializes in live performance captioning for patrons with hearing loss in theaters nationwide. C2 does about 700 performances a year. He and his staff pay attention to where the cues are on stage, where all the stops are, and pause when the actor pauses to deliver line-by-line captioning. Chicago theaters can partner with c2 to make their shows more accessible. Steppenwolf and the Chicago Cultural Accessibility Consortium (CCAC), a nonprofit devoted to accessibility of cultural spaces, offer accessibility equipment on loan to Chicago-area cultural organizations. Hatfield, a member of the CCAC steering committee, said many theaters coordinate with one another to make sure everyone gets to use the equipment for their patrons.
“To the theaters’ credit, the presence of captioning in Chicago theater is now commonplace,” Chu said. “You’re at a point as a patron, you have to choose between theaters sometimes because there are too many accessible shows being offered. And that’s something wonderful to say.”
Mike Ervin, playwright and disability advocate, shares the sentiment.
“Anytime someone comes along and wants to join in the party, there’s the CCAC and Steppenwolf and people that will cooperate, lend equipment, lend technical advice — do a lot of things that will help,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any excuse for anyone to not do anything at all.”
The robustness of Chicago’s accessibility in theatrical venues began with the Access Project at the Remains Theatre in 1992. When that theater shuttered, Victory Gardens Theater took over the project in 1995. Many now consider Victory Gardens outreach effort to involve people with disabilities in all aspects of theater to be the standard. Ervin, Access Project coordinator at Victory Gardens, said he used to be concerned that he and his then Access Project co-director Sandy Shinner were doing a good job, but accessibility was not catching on; now that’s not an issue.
“It’s a part of what theaters do, as much as what they budget and plan for with sound, lighting and costumes and everything else,” said the Printers Row resident. “I can say that there was a time when we were way, way ahead of everybody else and I’m happy to say that’s not the case anymore.”
But Ervin added that doesn’t mean improvements can’t be made — improvements that are shared by the disability community with those working at area institutions. A recent CCAC meeting with members of the disability community revealed shortcomings by local institutions — such as:
More people with disabilities in leadership positions at institutions (advisory boards, steering committees, board membership).
Training for front-of-house and box office staff on helping those with disabilities.
The placement of placards and seating throughout cultural spaces can matter depending on one’s disability.
Details about nearby public transportation and on-site accessibility (elevators and stairs) on websites are recommended, as are virtual or video tours of the interior space.
Details about caption board placement prior to a performance.
Hatfield would like to see more productions incorporate the caption display into the actual set design. He would also like to see caption on demand – where accessibility is less a scheduled thing with a few performances out of dozens.
“We’re telling these people that this is your only chance to see a play and while it might be communicatively and physically accessible, as far as scheduling goes, people have lives,” he said.
“The end goal is to make money,” said Grishma Shah, an artist with a left prosthetic arm. “You’re missing out on an opportunity for really cool people to come pay see your things. So on your website, write down in large print: we provide Braille. We have an awesome accessible entrance. And it’s really an entrance and not near the garbage can where we put a ramp down. That doesn’t make one feel welcome.”
Ervin would like to see more programming for people with disabilities — programming like the Crip Slam, the Access Project’s performance series featuring work by artists with and without disabilities celebrating disability culture. Through Victory Gardens’ Access Project and the Directors Inclusion Initiative, people with disabilities are being included in all aspects of theater.
“We said, how can we make the experience accessible not just offstage but onstage; how can we make stages more accessible, make people more aware of casting people with disabilities, how can we do programming that attracts folks with disabilities too?,” Ervin, who has muscular dystrophy, said. “A lot of theaters are doing services and some are doing artistic stuff too, but there aren’t too many doing both and I think that’s also important. We’ve gotten to the point where we acknowledge in many ways that disabled folks like everybody else deserve to watch the show and now we have to get to the point where we also acknowledge that they also deserve to be part of the show – they have something important to say and let’s do everything we can to make that happen too.”
‘X Marks the Spot’ by Chicago Children’s Theatre
If you were to describe a scene in a play to a person with low or impaired vision, how would you go about it?
If you’re a part of the staff and crew working on Chicago Children’s Theatre upcoming production, “X Marks the Spot,” you would provide a tactile map that audience members (ages 8 and up) can run their hands over to get a sense of place for the upcoming narrative — roads with houses, green grassy hills, a sandy beach and the cool waters of Lake Michigan are all represented. Sheets scented with lavender, the sounds of wings flapping, and young patrons get to taste what colors (i.e. a rainbow) would taste like.
A dark room with white lights are the only illumination. Kids are at tables with sensory items offered throughout each scene to guide them along the story’s path. Actors hold center stage with their movements, but it’s the sounds that they make that draw the attention to these theater-goers. Conceptually, as different things are revealed on the stage, they will also be localized on the tables with the aid of a staff member, children next to their parents.
The setting is an interactive experience with sounds and voices, and touchable and scented props — one where Jacqueline Russell, artistic director and founder of the Chicago Children’s Theatre, envisioned after years of conducting touch tours.
“That became my favorite time to come to the theater – during the touch tours,” she recalls. “As a theater maker, I wanted to do more with this population because they were so interested in detail and I had never experienced that kind of openness and different way of experiencing theater. So I started thinking, wouldn’t it be really cool if we could make a piece of theater where a touch tour is not just something that happens before the show — but gets woven into the theater experience, that everyone is included in it and we’re all sharing that experience.”
The play is based on the children’s novel “Five Children and It” by E. Nesbit where siblings are transplanted from Chicago to Michigan with their mom and the adventures that follow thanks to “it” — a sand fairy that grants wishes. Melody is a sibling and a central character who is visually impaired. During rehearsals, sound (by Paris Dozier) and description factored heavily to feed the imagination. Audience members were encouraged to use their other four senses to experience EST, “Extra Sensory Theatre,” in an attempt to give children insight into what it is like to encounter the world as a person who is blind or low vision.
“Disabled people, you kind of get these cool access opportunities but it’s usually before the show and you need to make an appointment and a lot of people are embarrassed about that because it makes them feel “othered,” said Andy Slater, a sound artist with retinitis pigmentosa and consultant on the “X” project. “But what’s really cool about this is it’s a story about a blind character that isn’t this stereotypical blind person – the character Melody isn’t walking into props, she’s not using her cane all the time, she’s written to have some vision and that’s much more realistic than the hypothetical kind of Mr. Magoo bumbling into all kinds of stuff. So with giving that presentation of that character and that disability, it’s really doing a service to understanding that not all blind people are totally blind.”
“Even as a little kid I never experienced something like this,” Jose Dominguez, a visually impaired freshman at DePaul University, said. “It was an experience where I got to use my imagination and that’s what a lot of visually impaired and blind kids have to do — use our imaginations.”
Russell is hopeful that more people will get into similar theater work for different populations.
“This must be a way in which Chicago leads the country, I think we have every bit of potential to be the city that other theatrical cities look towards to,” said actress Amanda De LaGuardia, who was rehearsing the “X” role of Melody. “If we are trying to create a space for people with disabilities in our audience, I think it’s equally if not more important to create space for actors with disabilities to be able to perform.”
“X Marks the Spot” begins performances Jan. 26 at Chicago Children’s Theatre’s The Station, 100 S. Racine Ave.; tickets are $35 at chicagochildrenstheatre.org.
