Clarence Brown Theatre to Offer Open Captioning to Select 2013-14 Performances

? The first professional producing theatre in Tennessee to offer this service, the Clarence Brown Theatre has partnered with the Theatre Development Fund's National Open Captioning Initiative to provide open captioning free of charge for the deaf and hard-of-hearing at select CBT performances during the 2013-2014 season.

"We are thrilled to provide another option to the Deaf and hard of hearing communities to participate in our live theatre experience," said Calvin MacLean, Clarence Brown Theatre Artistic Director.

Open Captioning is a text display of all of the words and sounds heard during a production-very similar to closed captioning on a television.

"By having access to 'visual' dialogue in addition to hearing aids or other listening devices, our hearing impaired individuals will be much more likely to attend and fully appreciate CBT performances," said John Berry, CEO and Co-founder of The Hearing and Speech Foundation.

Available to everyone regardless of whether or not they have hearing loss, Open Captioning is a type of "universal access." Even patrons with perfect hearing can miss a line spoken or sung from off-stage or have difficulty understanding an accent or dialect. Open Captioning makes it easy for everyone in the audience to get every word.

During this two-year partnership, TDF will provide captioning services to the CBT through Caption Coalition (c2), a leader in best practices for live performance captioning.

"I am excited about this as it increases the ability of a community I care deeply about having more access to something so many of us take for granted," said Judi Brookshire, Tennessee School for the Deaf.

Open Captioning will be available on the first Sunday 2:00 p.m. matinee for each of the 2013-2014 productions: Noises Off - September 8; Our Country's Good - October 6: CTRL+ALT+DELETE - October 27; A Christmas Carol - December 1; The Whipping Man - February 2; The Trip to Bountiful - February 23; Wrens - March 30; and, Spamalot - April 27.

In addition to Open Captioned productions, the CBT also will offer two "Deaf Night at the Theatre" special events: Wednesday, December 4th for A Christmas Carol and Thursday, February 27th for The Trip to Bountiful. Produced through a partnership with UT's Center on Deafness, these events will be fully accessible to members of the Deaf community with over a dozen interpreters stationed throughout the facility and two teams interpreting the production. We reserve a number of seats with the best sightline to the interpreters. To request seating in this section, please contact the Box Office at 865-974-5161 as these seats are not available online.

With a dual mission to train the next generation of theatre artists and to provide top quality professional theatre, the Clarence Brown Theatre at the University of Tennessee Knoxville is one of only 12 academic LORT (League of Resident Theatre) institutions in the nation. Under the artistic direction of Calvin MacLean, the CBT season runs from August through May and features eight productions ranging from musicals to drama. The 2013-2014 season includes: Noises Off, Our Country's Good, Ctrl+Alt+Delete, A Christmas Carol, The Whipping Man, The Trip to Bountiful, Wrens and Spamalot. For more information or tickets, call the CBT Box Office at 865-974-5161 or visit us online at http://clarencebrowntheatre.com/. Stay connected to the Clarence Brown Theatre on Facebook (Clarence Brown Theatre), follow on Twitter (@ClarenceBrown) and view Clarence Brown videos on YouTube (Clarence Bro).

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