Click image to enlargeBack to Karen's Story
Transcript - Long theatre drought is over
Captioning a first for deaf
By Tahnée Watson
It's been 25 years since Karen Dempsey has been able to attend Newcastle Civic Theatre to watch a live performance.
Like many deaf and hearing-impaired people in the community, Mrs Dempsey, who works for Better Hearing Australia, has been unable to go to live shows due to lack of captioning technology.
"I picked up a virus when I was 15 and that damaged my hearing. I was diagnosed as profoundly deaf by the time I was 40," she said.
"The last time I went to the Civic Theatre was about 25 years ago when I went to see a performance by Jon English, and I really couldn't hear what he was singing, but it was just the experience of being able to go to something like that." Although Mrs Dempsey had a cochlear implant nine years ago that gave her back some hearing, it is not enough to let her hear a live performance or watch a movie without captions.
Thanks to a trial introduction of captioning at the Civic Theatre for Andrew McKinnon Presentations production of Dickens' Women in October, Mrs Dempsey will be able to enjoy the theatre again.
"The equipment's there, the technology's there, it's so important for people like me to have the opportunity to go and enjoy something like the theatre," she said.
Civic precinct manager Daniel Ballantyne said he hoped to work with production companies to ensure the technology was implemented more regularly in 2008.
Unlike subtitles, theatre captions create an accurate textual display of theatre performance including actors' dialogue, ad libs, asides, song lyrics and musical descriptions.