Resources Hub

Here, you’ll find resources from our Rehearsal and Development of The Lesson in partnership with Ben Glover.

The Lesson Rehearsal and Development 2021

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Blog Posts


#1 Video Designer Ben Glover’s Reflections

As a deaf video designer, I was extremely excited by the opportunity to collaborate with Icarus Theatre to design creative captions for their production of The Lesson. Especially as it came around the perfect time after I had just set up a website dedicated to creative captions. https://www.creativecaptioning.com.

I approached the project with my video design experience and general understanding of how captions could work, but it wasn’t until we were in the theatre space did I realise that this was no easy task. It was only through the deeply involved collaboration and feedback from deaf and hard of hearing audiences were we able to fully accomplish the start of a truly creative captioned piece.

Initially there were some technical challenges, such as determining the software of choice and figuring out a workflow for the R&D. These challenges will still exist as there is no dedicated system for creative captions. However, we were keen to identify how this could be improved and what approaches video designers and captioners could take. In the end we decided to focus on a video based system where each caption was created as a video file and played through QLab. This may not be the best approach for everyone but it allowed me to be as creative as possible by incorporating my video design experience into animating and transitions for the creative captions.

Through working collaboratively in the theatre we were able to plan a structure that would suit everyone best. The first few days in the theatre were focusing on the location and projection mapping on the captions onto the set, this allowed me to set guidelines for the font size and line breaks. We quickly developed a pattern of working where my mornings were mostly spent designing and programming the captions into QLab and the afternoons were spent running through the latest set of designed captions with the actors. In the mornings the director was able to go over the scenes and think about the placement of actors, delivery of lines and what, if any, interactions they would have with the captions.

At the end of our R&D we had a sharing with a small audience. I was delighted to hear that the captions were valuable and felt part of the show. There was some very useful feedback such as; trying different colours, different fonts to make it more readable and having the captions closer to the actors on set (i.e move to a different surface when the actor moves). The 2nd week of R&D allowed me to explore these ideas further and reflect on any challenges during the first week.

One bit of advice that I would have for anyone who is looking to use creative captions is to be mindful of the accessibility part of captions. You still want your captions to be read and understood by an audience without being so creative that they distract from the show or become unreadable. You also don’t want them to be too plain as the opportunity is there to integrate the captions into the show and make it enjoyable not only for deaf and hard of hearing audiences but for all audiences.



#2 Creative Producer and Actor Hazel Caulfield’s Blog Post

This was a brand new and exciting experience as a performer. It was explained from the start that the video design would be a fourth character in the play and is it not often that the actor gets to work so closely with the designers.

Our director, Max encouraged us to share ideas and play without fear of stepping on toes. Overall, I think this is why we were able to find new moments and even whole new sequences… the caption design was brought in from the beginning and was able to be treated, respected and understood as a fourth character to interact with. Hats off to Ben for not throwing a book at me, when I would suggest a new animation every other line and to Max for sifting through all our ideas.

My favourite sequence that stuck with me was a mime with the gramophone which was accompanied by Matt (Sound Design) and Ben (Video Design). Some of the props through the absurd show are imagined and mimed, the gramophone being one of them. As I knock into it, the music goes off and Ben has a projection of a gramophone behind me with music notes coming out. All this starts and stops several times as my character repeatedly hits it on and off. A warm moment shared by hopefully all audience.

I was, of course, slightly anxious about having all my lines displayed for the audience to see me make an error! But this is exactly the wrong thing to focus on and such an actors mindset, I have to remind myself that, no Hazel it is not all about me! Ben and our audiences were very understanding to lines slipping or words swapped. I knew that every line had its own queue that Ben had worked meticulously on so there was pressure to respect his work, while being as accurate as possible to honour the purpose of captioning. Max, was very good at re-focussing us actors on communicating the story by getting into the skin of the characters. He made a great point that our body language speaks as loud as our words and therefore playing our objectives and inhabiting the character would help to convey the story alongside Ben’s wonderful captions.

From an actors point of view it was such a blessing to have the designers in the room, I understand this is a luxury but if a design element does become another character, it makes sense to rehearse with them.





#3 Artistic Director Max Lewendel’s Blog Post for Directors working with Creative Captioning

Welcome directors interested in working with Creative Captioning!

I think the most important advice to give would be to treat Creative Captioning as a full design element. The designer needs to be there from early on in the design process, coming to the design and production meetings so that they can collaborate with the other four designers on a level playing field.

Just as Lighting needs to be involved with decisions to have a mirrored floor or an entirely white set, so too does the Captioner need to be involved in the decisions on what lighting is used, or what surfaces they will be able to project onto.

Do not at any time look at this as a hindrance. Lighting isn’t hindering you by pointing out the challenges presented by a mirrored floor, and so too with projection. Instead, engage them in such a way as you would with any designer: challenges create room for creative inspiration, and that is the whole point.

In The Lesson, our opening scene of 2 minutes in silence needed help from the designers. I asked for some padding from the Sound Designer. I suggested birdsong and he suggested a cuckoo clock. The Captioner latched onto the cuckoo clock and together they created one of the best sequences in the show, comedically introducing the design language of the captioning to the audience. Sound altered their design to match the animated captioning, prompting additional ideas that we incorporated. The sound of the ticking and the pendulum on the cuckoo clock didn’t match up, so Sound and Projection needed to coordinate the timing.

The actress came in and when the cuckoo clock faded away she instinctively knocked on the surface it was projected onto. The Captioner created a visual to illustrate the sound of the knocking.

This can be a truly collaborative form of working, and indeed that is when it works best.

There were around 700 cues in the 30 minutes of performance we developed, so never underestimate the intricacy required. Does an actor usually pause half way through a line? Well, think from a non-hearing point of view: the accompanying line of captioning will likely need to be broken up into two separate cues. Is there emphasis on a given word? Is it important to the story? The Captioner could emphasise that word and there should be a conversation on how and why whenever this is not obvious, or when the actor hasn’t yet found their groove, so the needs of the captioning are not yet clear.

For any audience, a story should be communicated visually as well as through what we hear. Therefore the solutions given for a Deaf/HoH audience can – and should – benefit a hearing audience as well.
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We need to expand our thinking to incorporate those who use their senses differently than we do. That absolutely does NOT mean taking every suggestion that they give. That means listening to the problem that their suggestion is communicating. Is that a one-off opinion, or a broader problem? Does their solution work with the rest of the design, or is it necessary to fix the problem in a different way?

Just like any other design element.

If the audience says you need to bring the lights up because they can’t see, maybe what you want as the director for them to just see the face of one actor better. Far better than just bringing the lights up would be to brighten up slightly the area of the stage that they need to see. Or darken the rest.

Does a Deaf audience ask for captions to be colour-coded? They’re saying that they can’t tell which character is speaking. If color-coding damages the message of the play, you need to find another way to fix the problem.

Do not do everything your audience says, nor ignore their opinions. Find out what their opinion actually means theatrically and use your craft to give them something unexpected.

This has been a revolutionary three weeks. I’ve opened my eyes to the amount of work required to do proper justice to this new way of captioning, and completely understand the enormous obstacle to theatre attendance there is in conventional captioning. We have just scratched the surface of what we can do and already have some amazing feedback; Ben and I could spend six more weeks working on the captioning alone.