‘Cabaret’ captioning: Local Anchorage theater company introduces accessibility aid

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - A performance of “Cabaret” at Cyrano’s Theatre Company brought the deaf and hard-of-hearing community into the story with live closed captioning.

Accessible with a tablet or cell phone, the newly-implemented closed captioning program at Cyrano’s gave audience members a new way to enjoy live theater in Alaska.

“The arts in our community is so important for telling stories, sharing our human existence and creating a community within our own community here in Anchorage,” said production manager Seth Eggleston. “Accessibility is super important for that to getting bring all sorts of people into that fold.”

Eggleston said making captions available on a mobile device will be easier to do consistently than other accessibility efforts Cyrano’s has made in the past. “We’ve done a couple of shows in the past with some interpreters and whatnot, and some shows just don’t allow for that for live theaters - close quarters or it’s harder to get an interpreter in our sort of small, intimate black box space,” Eggleston said. “This is our first big step toward long-term accessibility.”

As for accessing the captions, Eggleston said audience members scan a QR code posted near the front, and an agent listening to the live production remotely sends the captions as the production continues.

Each production at Cyrano’s only has one captioned evening during its run, which has already passed for “Cabaret.” The next production happening at Cyrano’s is “Dial M for Murder,” Eggleston said the date for the captioned evening can be found on their website.

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