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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
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When John Zamary taught sixth graders in Danbury, Connecticut, the high point of the school year was taking the class to Broadway. But Zamary stopped teaching in 1992, after failing vision forced him to retire. He still went to the theater with his wife, but finally, that stopped, too. “I remember the day it happened,” Zamary says. “We were at A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and I couldn’t see any of the gestures or facial expressions. I told my wife I didn’t want to go to plays anymore.” All the fun had gone out of the experience for him. “Sure [the visually impaired] can hear and understand the dialogue, but we miss all the important nuances and movements, not to mention the sets and costumes,” Zamary says. Then he learned about a new program offered by the Yale Repertory Theatre that helps sight-challenged patrons “see” the action on stage. The service, still in its infancy, is called audio description, and the Yale Rep is the first theater in Connecticut to offer it. Using a radio-wave system, audio describers provide a concise narration of the visual elements of the performance, which the sight-impaired can hear through headsets. Managing director Victoria Nolan says the Rep’s new artistic director, James Bundy, made it a priority. “He said, ‘How can we be a major regional theater and not be accessible? Let’s just go for it.’” So, without knowing what they were getting themselves into, Rep administrators announced they were offering the service. The task proved tougher than dealing with a demanding diva. “There are always lots of weird problems when you put in a new system,” says Rep sound supervisor Brian MacQueen. Chief among them was designing a system that wouldn’t produce ear-splitting feedback in listeners' headphones. Then there was the challenge of training skilled audio describers. Two people work together in a sound-proof booth. They must read the script and see the performance several times so they can time their descriptions to be delivered when the actors aren’t speaking. Nolan says word of the program is spreading, with roughly 20 patrons using it the last time it was offered at the Rep. “It’s a really exciting thing to do,” she says. “We’re opening a world to people who have been deprived of theater.” People like Zamary. He says that while attending Breath, Boom, “I had tears in my eyes. It was emotionally cathartic to finally be able to know everything that was happening on stage. It was something I hadn’t experienced in years.” |
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©1992–2012, Yale Alumni Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Yale Alumni Magazine, P.O. Box 1905, New Haven, CT 06509-1905, USA. yam@yale.edu |
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