Enter Stage Right now offering audio description services for its visually impaired audience
PORT HURON - Enter Stage Right has made theater more accessible by implementing audio description services for its visually impaired audience members.
The first show that will provide the service will be the Feb. 10 performance of the theater's production of "Wait Until Dark." Enter Stage Right Executive Director Regina Spain said the theater has regular audience members who are visually impaired. She said providing audio description services has always been a goal for the theater.
"The visually impaired community can be very isolating, and they may not frequent a lot of the artistic things that seeing people go to, so this service gives them a way to see and enjoy theater like everyone else," Spain said.
Spain said the goal is to offer audio description services at one show for every production the theater puts on.
Enter Stage Right has also been partnering with the Blue Water League of the Blind for years. The two organizations have done fundraisers together, and some of the league members have been performers in shows.
Blue Water League of the Blind President Phyllis Magbanua said Enter Stage Right is a great organization to partner with, and that the league is very much behind the theater's efforts to provide the audio services.
"They need something for the people that are blind and deaf, especially the blind community," she said. "You can hear the actors talking, but you don't really know what they are doing. I think having (audio services) is a great idea."
The Port Huron Lions Club donated the funding for the audio description services being provided by Audio Description Services Midwest.
"Wait Until Dark" follows the character Susan Hendrix, who is a newly blind woman, as she is terrorized by a group of men in her apartment. Hendrix discovers that her blindness might be key to her escape.
None of the actors in the "Wait Until Dark" cast are blind. Enter Stage Right consulted with the Blue Water League of the Blind so the actor playing Hendrix could respectfully portray a blind woman.
Spain said it was both a coincidence and purposeful that "Wait Until Dark" was the first Enter Stage Right production to use audio description services.
"We've been looking into providing this for so long but doing this show has really pushed us to make sure it happened," she said.
"Wait Until Dark" opens at 7 p.m. on Friday. The production will have a show every Friday, Saturday and Sunday throughout February. Tickets can be purchased at www.enterstageright.org.
Reservations for the audio description services can be made by calling Enter Stage Right at (810) 334-6415. People who have reserved the service are asked to take their seats 15 minutes before the show begins to attend the interpreter's pre-show.
Enter Stage Right will provide 12 receivers for the show. These receivers will relay the interpreter's description of the set, props and any other aspects of the show that cannot be easily seen.
Additionally, Enter Stage Right will offer a "touch tour" of the stage for people using the audio service. These tours include members of Enter Stage Right taking visually impaired audience members onto the set so they can touch everything to better understand the audio descriptions.
Enter Stage Right's black box theater set up already allows audience members to be very close to the performers. Spain said Enter Stage Right has heard from many of its visually impaired audience members that they enjoy the theater's space because of how intimate it is.
Enter Stage Right wants to continue its efforts to make theater more accessible. In the future, the theater would like to provide American Sign Language interpreters for deaf and hearing-impaired audience members.
Contact McKenna Golat at mgolat@gannett.com.
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This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: Enter Stage Right to provide audio description service at productions
