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The Impossible is Only the Untried: A Prologue Podcast
Prologue Performing Arts has partnered with the W. Ross Macdonald School for the Blind to explore how the arts community can support and present new and engaging performing arts initiatives for young audiences with vision loss and low vision, while also mentoring and learning from the young people throughout the creative process. Students will be leaders in defining how the arts community can further their engagement with young people with vision loss. Through this audio journal, Project Coordinator Mandy E. MacLean will document the project sharing experiences and learnings.
The Impossible is Only the Untried: A Prologue Podcast
Episode Eight - The Test Audeince
In this episode, Mandy shares what was found when the project had an invited test audeince - a group of excited grade 6,7, and 8 students from W. Ross MacDonald!
W. Ross Macdonald X Prologue Performing Arts Collaboration is supported by The Canada Council for the Arts and the Arthur and Audrey Cutten Foundation.
Learn more about the W. Ross MacDonald X Prologue Performing Arts collaboration at @prologuearts and www.prologue.org
Episode Eight - Test Audience!
(various student voices) The impossible. The impossible. The impossible. The impossible. The impossible. The impossible. The impossible is Only the Untried.
(Mandy) Welcome to Episode Eight of The Impossible is Only the Untried - a Prologue Performing Arts podcast. My name is Mandy E. MacLean, and I am the Project Coordinator for the collaboration between Prologue Performing Arts and the W. Ross Macdonald School for the Blind.
In this podcast, we are sharing findings that are being discovered and questions that are being asked when we think about how to make theatre more accessible to youth from the Low Vision and Blind community. A team of professional theatre artists - and the students of the W. Ross MacDonald are exploring with us!
This semester we’ve had two goals: The first was to hold exploration sessions with the class, and the second was to work toward implementing the findings of these sessions into the class’s semester-end performance - a piece called “That One Drama Class”.
The audience perspective - gathering and incorporating feedback from the students at W. Ross - has been crucial to our project. At times, our class has sat in the role of the audience during our exploratory sessions - and if you’ve listened to some of the previous podcast episodes you’ve heard some of their thoughts. But very early on we decided we would need to test some of our work for an audience completely new to the project - W. Ross students who knew nothing about the story of our play- and who had no insider info on all the elements we were strategically using.
Therefore, we scheduled a test audience session. To do this we selected a specific group of grade 6,7,& 8 students from W. Ross. We then decided on a section of the play that included many of the tech elements, we prepared this section with the drama class, and then it was time to perform! Before the performance, we briefed the audience on what to expect. In the full show, we’ve included an embedded introduction that acts as a prologue. During the prologue, characters let the audience know they will be experiencing loud and immersive sounds, high-contrast lighting, and will be invited to participate. We also let the audience know that they are invited to leave the performance if needed - and move and express themselves in whatever way makes them feel the most comfortable. Since the section we chose for the test audience did not include the “embedded introduction” - we sent this information to their teachers in advance. This was done to show care, and offer support to any access needs of our test audience members. And guess what? The test audience really liked this! They felt like they were coming into the room prepared, and that this came from a place of care, and was done in a way that didn’t give out any spoilers! Therefore, in addition to the embedded intro at the top of the show for the full performance in December, we’re also going to send an email to the classes that would be attending the performance preparing them for the elements in the show.
We started. The lights went down, and the actors were ready and gave it their all - and the audience was totally in it! I love it when you can hear how excited an audience is, beyond just the regular laughter. When you hear the odd OH MY GOSH! Or THAT WAS AWESOME! Or HOLY COW! - you know that an audience is really with the story.
Then it was quickly done - to hoops and hollers and all kinds of applause! We invited the audience to sit with us after the performance of the selected scene and they discussed with us what they experienced.
Here’s what we were trying out, and some of the feedback they gave us:
We chose a selection that included a lot of sound! During the performance, the audience audibly reacted to the movement of sound - positively and with excitement. At the talkback, they said they were able to sense the movement of the sound, and that it allowed them to feel that the superpowers and the monster were moving around the space. Multiple students said that this was a new immersive experience for them, and it allowed them to feel as though things were “really happening”. A particular student named Caleb (who introduced himself as someone with sound sensitivity) said that the Monster's voice might be too loud for some students, proving that levelling is crucial when you consider sound elements - but that he was grateful for the performance introduction and was able to remain with the sound, and comfortable knowing it was only going to be used for specific moments. He also mentioned that he enjoyed the actor's wide variety of emotions and that this allowed him to participate in the story, proving that the voice really is an incredibly engaging tool we all have access to! The test audience made it very clear that a strategic sound design that envelopes the audience and uses directional sound is very successful and it really works.
Some partially sighted students mentioned that they could experience moments of high-contrast lighting. Three moments that were highlighted were (1) a large shift from a blackout - when the explosion occurs in the play (2) a moment when light shoots across the room and there is a flash - when a superpower occurs, and (3) when rich colour was used in repeated moments - in this case, in our play, flashes of bright rich red. Therefore, high contrast in lighting is key!
As we mentioned earlier, our play has moments where the audience is invited to participate. Characters turn out to the audience and ask for help or ask them what they think they should do next. And the test audiences loved this! They felt that this was an opportunity to participate in the story in a way that had a clear invitation. For example, a character might turn to the audience and say “Everyone out there tell me your name on the count of three… one… two… three!” and then they all shout their names! This is a clear invitation to play, that has a low-level risk attached to it, and is highly engaging. It’s exciting and fun and easily helps bring the audience into the story! Depending on the specific story of the piece there could be all kinds of conceits developed around this. But for our test audience - this worked!
We’ve talked a lot in previous podcast episodes about how we made attempts to integrate non-traditional audio descriptions into the script - and the test audience responded really positively to this! They agreed that there is no “perfect amount” and that it really is a personal preference - but they appreciated that we focused on including it in portions of the text where more detail was needed to move the story forward - and not just anywhere and everywhere like a lot of these students feel TV shows sometimes do.
During the talk-back, I worked with the audio tech of our project Mike Burnell - who quickly was able to whip up some additional examples of sounds moving around the space - and set up the conditions to allow each student in the test audience to try our “Monster Mic” mentioned in episode seven. It was a lot of laughs for the test audience - and also for the actors - and another opportunity for the students to all hear what an important piece of storytelling sound can be when it is used strategically.
So just to recap:
A performance intro welcoming your audience and showing care, directional sound, high contrast lighting, participation, and embedded non-traditional audio description are all strategic ways to integrate access into the theatre you are creating. The students of our test audience helped us realize how important it is to continue thinking about these elements, and how we've only scratched the surface. Each of these elements can be unpacked & explored in a huge multitude of ways! But what’s important is that they are included, and attempted - because they can offer youth from the Low Vision & Blind Community new and exciting ways to experience theatre.
These kids were dying to know how the play ended… but they will have to wait until the full performance in December! I can’t wait to update you on our progress, and how excited our actors are for the culmination of this work. Next week, the class will tech the show, and then we perform!
I encourage all of you to come up with questions, and if you are interested in exploring more, please reach out to Prologue and continue this conversation. Visit www.prologue.org or find us on social media at @prologuearts!
And here are those amazing students to send us off –
(various student voices) The impossible. The impossible. The impossible. The impossible. The impossible. The impossible. The impossible is Only the Untried.