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IN TOUCH – Audio Described Theatre Performances; World Record Runner Sinead Kane

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TX:Ìý 14.10.20Ìý 2040-2100

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PRESENTER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý FERN LULHAM

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PRODUCER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý MIKE YOUNG

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Lulham

Good evening and it’s a pleasure to be sitting in for Peter White for the first time.Ìý Tonight, we’ll hear how even before lockdown fewer and fewer theatres were offering audio described performances – what can be done to reverse the trend?Ìý And I’ll be chatting with the remarkable Sinead Kane.Ìý She’s not just the first blind solicitor in Ireland but a world record holding athlete too.

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Kane

It just has opened up experiences to me.Ìý It has brought me to low points in my life and it is brought me to high points in my life.

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Lulham

More from Sinead Kane a little later.

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But first, seeing a performance in a theatre when you’re visually impaired can be as frustrating as it can be entertaining.Ìý However, audio described productions can help to add to the pleasure and take away that feeling that you’re not catching everything going on, on stage.Ìý But research suggests the number of theatres in the UK offering audio described performances is actually falling.Ìý We’ll hear from the Audio Description Association in a moment but first, regular theatre-goer Glen Turner from East Ham in London has been telling me how audio description works for him.

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Turner

In the theatre, because it has to be delivered live because every performance is different, a live person is elsewhere in the theatre delivering the audio description through a headset that you’re wearing in the auditorium.Ìý It makes sure that I’m on a level playing field with the rest of the audience, you know, I’m not missing any jokes; I’m understanding all the dance moves – things like that – in musicals; I understand what the costumes are like; what the scenery changes are like; just spot anything that’s critical in the plot.Ìý Without it I can sort of follow a show a little bit, but there’s usually lots that I miss.

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Lulham

And you mentioned there going to see different kinds of productions, are there particular types of performances that work especially well with audio description?

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Turner

Well they all work at some degree.Ìý I mean busy plays like musicals, where there’s loads of things happening on the stage all at once, it’s really critical for that.Ìý Comedies it’s helpful for visual jokes.Ìý Facial expressions as well with emotions and things like that in dramas.

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Lulham

Yeah, I can imagine that especially with like you say comedies because there is nothing worse than sitting there and everyone else around you is laughing and you don’t know what they’re laughing at, you can feel quite excluded in that way.

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Turner

The great thing about audio description is you feel included with everyone; you’re sharing the experience with everyone around you which is what you go to the theatre for.Ìý Where audio description is available it’s encouraged me to go and see ballets or Shakespeare, things like that, that I would never really have considered trying before.

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Lulham

So, if I go to a theatre now and try and book a show, how likely do you think I would find it, to get one that comes with audio description?

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Turner

I mean at the moment with the current situation there are barely any.Ìý The issue I find is that not only are there few productions that do it but the ones that do only offer it on specific dates, like one or two dates in the entire run, so you don’t have the freedom of choice that everybody else has.

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Lulham

That’s Glen Turner, who’s hoping to see some more shows again soon.

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Tim Calvert is an access consultant and a spokesman for the Audio Description Association.Ìý Tim, the Vocalise charity looked into the amount of audio described performances on offer in the UK and found that there were more theatres offering them in 2017 than there were last year, why do you think that is?

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Calvert

Obviously, we, as an organisation, are very disappointed that there are less theatres actually providing audio description.Ìý I do feel that there’s some very good ones out there that are offering a lot more audio description than they did before.Ìý I think there’s always going to be a case of some theatres where a lot of things change in the management structure of the theatre and that will affect their budgets and that will bring about a change.Ìý And also, if they feel there’s less people actually attending an audio described performance, they’ll think well perhaps it’s not warranted.Ìý The audio described audience really needs to reach out to venues and tell them how they feel and what they want and it’s important that theatres who take the effort to make their shows accessible also put time into marketing them to a visually impaired audience.

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Lulham

Do you think cost is a factor in this at all, I mean can theatres ever make providing audio description pay?

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Calvert

Personally, I feel that theatres don’t put on audio described performances to make money.Ìý Obviously, it’s an objective to fill seats as much as possible but most do it because they feel it’s the right thing to do and to make content inclusive and accessible.Ìý There are often challenges, however, because solving the problem of staging a good quality audio description for a production can often come down to money, whether it’s to pay for a professional audio description provider or to pay to train volunteers to deliver it.Ìý But there’s always options and solutions available.

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Lulham

Well let’s hear what a leading figure in the theatre industry has to say.

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Bird

Hello, I’m Julian Bird the Chief Executive of the Society of London Theatre and UK Theatre.Ìý I think assisted performances of all types – audio described and many of the others – are really important.Ìý We know that when the production lends itself well to audio description there’s a big demand for it, there’s a demand from theatres across the country that are committed to make it happen and there’s a demand that we see from audiences as well.Ìý I think it’s quite difficult to look at numbers between one year and the next.Ìý I think what’s great is to see the commitment across the theatre industry to assisted performances.Ìý You know in London the Society of London Theatre, we’re very proud to publish the access guide in the take up of that has increased over the years.Ìý I mean obviously we’re at a point, at the moment, where many, many theatres are sadly closed due to the pandemic but it’s great to see audio description actually being offered by some of the digital offerings that we see out there, the digital theatre seasons.

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Lulham

So, Tim, Julian Bird there says it’s hard to compare numbers year on year, there are very different productions running each year, do you think that’s a fair point?

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Calvert

Yeah, I think it’s very fair because it varies how many audio described performances there are going to be from theatre to theatre.Ìý There is a lot more in the West End, or there was, before the current situation.Ìý It struggles in other parts of the country like the Midlands and the North West, it’s struggled a little bit around that sort of area.

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Lulham

So, the theatres we know will only offer live productions with audio description probably about once or twice at most, won’t they, do you think a pre-recorded option could ever work for live theatre?

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Calvert

I think pre-recorded audio description is still a work in progress and not without its problems.Ìý Not to say that some theatres like the New Worsley in Ipswich and the Birmingham Rep haven’t made it work effectively for their Christmas productions due to a lot of hard work and effort.Ìý But pre-recorded audio description sort of currently has the issue of not being able to compensate for things going wrong or sometimes it goes out of sync.Ìý But I think with improvements in innovation and technology who’s not to say a solution won’t be found some time in the future.Ìý I think you’re correct that most theatres provide one or two live performances due to budgetary restraints and this can often exclude those who may not be available.Ìý So, I would say that scheduling audio description as much in advance as possible is an advantage, as well as making sure that people actually know when they are and then asking theatre goers what their preferences are.

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Lulham

And of course, like Julian mentioned, we do have streamed theatre performances now, so do you think maybe that’s more of an opportunity where pre-recorded audio description could come into play and work better?

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Calvert

Yeah.Ìý We had Twelfth Night from the National Theatre, which was the first free audio described streaming from the National and that got a lot of publicity and it was also, in a way, a novelty, an experiment and with nothing else available at the time theatre wise to immerse ourselves in it’s perfectly understandable that a large part of the community would check it out if able to.Ìý There does seem to be a consensus though that a lot is lost through a recording and it can never compete with a live theatre experience.

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Lulham

Tim Calvert, thanks very much for coming on.

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There’s a link on this programme’s page on the In Touch website to the Audio Description Association.

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Now, like me, Sinead Kane has the eye condition Aniridia.Ìý Sinead now has very little sight, however, she’s got rather good at achieving firsts in her life.Ìý She was the first registered blind solicitor in Ireland and three years ago she was the first blind woman to run seven marathons on seven continents in seven days.Ìý

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Sinead is now calling for more people with visual impairments to get involved in sport of any kind.Ìý She told me she’s frustrated at not being encouraged to participate in sport when she was younger.

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Kane

It just has opened up experiences to me.Ìý It has brought me to low points in my life and it has brought me to high points in my life.Ìý I did the World Marathon Challenge – running a marathon on each continent.Ìý So, the first marathon was in Antarctica and it was chilly, then it was Miami, then it was Madrid, then it was Marrakesh, then Dubai and then Sydney, Australia.Ìý I had spent a full year trying to get sponsorship, not only for me but my running guide and it was just turning out to be so, so difficult.Ìý It has shown me discipline, patience because we live in a world where everything is instant and everybody wants instant success but with running you have to be patient and you have to wait and you have to wait for the results, you don’t just knock off an hour off a marathon time in say four weeks training, you really do have to be patient.

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Lulham

And you’ve been incredibly successful in it.Ìý I mean you’ve actually achieved two world records because in 2018 you also broke the Guinness World Record for the furthest distance for a female on a treadmill in 12 hours.Ìý You certainly don’t give up do you Sinead?

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Kane

Yeah, well when I was approaching that treadmill record attempt I got very nervous and I actually decided that I wasn’t going to attempt it and because what I did was I looked up the girl who had the record and she had achievement after achievement after achievement listed on her website and I started comparing myself to her and I started saying to myself – oh well, I don’t have all these achievements and she has all of them so there’s no way that I’m going to break her record.Ìý And I think the lesson learned from that was to stop comparing myself to other people and to focus on my own strengths and I ended up achieving the record.Ìý So, the distance I covered was 130.5 kilometres in 12 hours.

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Lulham

But it hasn’t been all plain sailing has it Sinead, you have faced some brick walls along the way, for a while it looked as though you wouldn’t be allowed to run a 24 hour world championship event because having a guide running alongside you was seen as an unfair advantage.Ìý Tell us how you challenged that and what the outcome was.

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Kane

I ended up taking a legal case against the International Association of Ultrarunning and the judgement stated that I had been discriminated against under Article 14 of the European Convention of Human Rights and so I got my space and I was allowed to compete.Ìý And I suppose the reason why that all happened was because this was the first time a person with a disability, such as blindness, was ever going to be competing at a world championship, at 24 hour ultrarunning, they hadn’t dealt with this in the past and therefore they were saying that for me to use a guide runner that was breaching an IAAF rule which states that no athlete is allowed assistance.Ìý My argument to them was well this doesn’t actually breach any rule because in a Paralympic event, even though this is not a Paralympic event, guide runners are not seen as pacers or they’re not seen as breaching any rule and therefore that should be applied here to my scenario.

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Lulham

And I guess, also, your knowledge of the law would have been a really valuable factor in winning that battle.Ìý I mean what inspired you to become a solicitor?

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Kane

Well again, I think it was low expectations of teachers in school.Ìý At 17 I told my careers advisor teacher that I wanted to study law, she told me that you can’t do that, it’s a reading-based subject, you’ll never be able for it.Ìý I just said, okay, well if that’s your opinion I still want to study law.Ìý So, I went on, I studied law, I used to always have pains in my wrist, pains in my lower back from doing the amount of reading that I was doing.Ìý So, I decided to give up and I suppose I did feel at that moment in time like a failure and I was a bit nervous to be telling my parents and I told them and then their attitude was – well, if you want to give up that’s fine.Ìý We went to London, thought I was going on a shopping trip but ended up going to Chancery Lane, they had organised for me to meet a judge who was totally blind and I talked with him about everything else other than law and he gave me a lot of confidence and I went on, got my law degree, got my masters in law and qualified as Ireland’s first visually impaired solicitor in 2009.

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Lulham

I’ve been thinking about this, clearly you were discouraged both in sport and in your legal profession when you were young, and it makes me wonder if following a career in law has actually been easier than achieving some of the things you have in sport, like would you say you’ve come across fewer barriers as a solicitor than as an athlete or is that not the case?

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Kane

I’ve faced discrimination in all areas of my life, whether it be sport or in the legal profession or just in general.Ìý So, if I was taking all the cases where I’m always discriminated against, I’d be constantly in court as a client as opposed to being a solicitor.Ìý You have to have a lot of inner confidence within yourself to try and be battling with discrimination.

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Lulham

Yes, I suppose what you’re saying is they both have challenges but in different ways.Ìý It makes me wonder what this thing is with sport though, why do you think it was that you weren’t encouraged to take part in sport when you were younger?

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Kane

Well, I think there’s a lot of reasons – poor physical education provisions in schools, negative school experiences, low expectations of teachers, lack of information, poor community facilities and lack of companions to maybe help the person with a disability and just the general culture around people’s expectations of people with disabilities.Ìý Like nobody would ever really think that a person with a disability can get into, say, a world championship of ultrarunning – 24-hour ultrarunning.Ìý A lot of people ask me – oh, is that with the Paralympics – they automatically assume it’s got to do with Paralympics.Ìý Now I’m not putting down people in Paralympic sport, why is there that assumption already that I must be competing with other disabled people?

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Lulham

Yeah, and you spoke about your childhood, do you think that’s still the case for visually impaired children today, that they’re discouraged from joining in with sport?

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Kane

I think it has improved but I do think that certain parents come to me and they tell me – oh, how can I raise this issue with the school, I feel my child is being given a low-level type of participation.Ìý Now, obviously, there’s no point trying to make a child do something that they just cannot do, like for me, say, with badminton it would be quite difficult for me to do badminton because I just would not see where the hell the white shuttle is or even tennis – that is quite difficult – but I suppose in that situation then it’s up to the school to be adaptable, that rather than having badminton on every single Monday in the PE class, that they come up with something else creative and that they actually contact different organisations to say, right, we’ve one person with a disability in our school but we do want to make that one person feel included, can you give us guidance to make sport and PE a bit more accessible rather than us just telling that person to take notes.

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Lulham

And also, I suppose, it’s from the young people’s point of view as well, I mean if a young person is listening right now and they’re hitting those same brick walls that you were coming up against in sport, what would you say to them?

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Kane

Rather than just leaving it to the school maybe you, the person with the disability, show some leadership and educate yourself as well because that’s what I have found that if you really want something in life and if you have a goal, the goal kind of has to start with you and you have to see it first and for others to visualise that around you.Ìý Now, obviously, say, if I were six or seven year, eight year old, the younger you are the more support you do need but I think that if you’re at an age where you can articulate your voice you should try and do it and if you have access to technology, supervised of course by parents, try and look up different organisations.Ìý That’s my advice for a young person.

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Lulham

That’s Sinead Kane.

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That’s all for this week, Peter will be back next week.Ìý If you want to drop us a line you can email intouch@bbc.co.uk and do go to our website, bbc.co.uk/intouch where you can find this and other editions of the programme.Ìý From me, Fern Lulham, producer Mike Young and studio manager Chris Hardman, goodbye.

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