Open Captioning Services Now At Pasadena Playhouse

Pasadena Playhouse will partner with TDF, one of the nation's leading theatre support organizations dedicated by bringing the power of performing arts to everyone, in presenting Open Captioning during its 2019-2020 plays and musicals.

Each of the five mainstage productions will have a performance that will feature technology that provides a text display of the words of the performance that is visible from a particular seating area. For audience members with hearing disabilities, and who now use assistive listening devices, hearing aids, cochlear implants, sign language and lip reading, this display - which can be used or ignored - allows them to have a larger enjoyment of the experience of live theatre. With this technology, no guest is labeled as needing the captioning, or the need for special equipment required when seated.

The four main stage productions for 2019-2020 include new productions of favorite musicals - Little Shop of Horrors with book and lyrics by Howard Ashman and music by Alan Menken, directed by Mike Donahue, and Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun with book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields, directed by Sarna Lapine - and two plays - the Los Angeles premiere of Lauren Yee's The Great Leap directed by BD Wong, a co-production with East West Players, and Alfred Molina starring in the critically acclaimed West End and Broadway hit The Father by Florian Zeller and directed by Jessica Kubzansky. One more production and additional programming will be announced at a later date.

The dates of these performances are as follows:

• Little Shop of Horrors: Sunday, October 6 at 2:00PM
• The Great Leap: Sunday, November 24 at 2:00PM
• The Father and Annie Get Your Gun: TBD
• And a fifth production to be announced

Tickets for Open Captioning seating for Little Shop of Horrors and The Great Leap will be available beginning Tuesday, July 23, at www.pasadenaplayhouse.org, or by calling 626-356-7529.

This Open Captioning is a technology of c2 (Caption Coalition) Inc., a consultant and service provider of both theatrical captioning and CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) captioning; to date, c2 members are collectively responsible for captioning over 800 theatrical productions in more than 180 venues. Furthermore, c2 also provides CART captioning of various lecture series in the arts.

About 10-15% of the population is hard of hearing or deaf. Based on statistics from the Office of the Deaf, it is estimated that there are 800,000 deaf and hard of hearing people in greater Los Angeles; If roughly 3% of these individuals attend arts events, that translates into 24,000 potential audience members for captioning. Within the next 10 years, it is estimated that one out of every five Americans will be 65 and older, and 25% of them will have some level of hearing loss. There is an enormous need for open captioning, and audiences for the service continue to grow.

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