Thanks to YouTube, the term “closed captioning” has become the default way of referring to captioning of any kind, but in theatre it has a very specific meaning, and should be used carefully to manage expectations of deaf and hearing audience members.

At the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2017, the Pleasance booked me to provide live captioning for 21 performances of different shows, between 14th and 26th August. 

In March this year, a show called Lost Without Words was produced by Improbable at the National Theatre. Billed as a theatrical experiment, it put older actors on stage with no script to create a different show every night.  

Live subtitling for Elvis? It sounds like the punchline to a joke. But it’s actually an assignment I undertook for Manchester Arena this year, and the preparation and the technical set-up raised some interesting challenges.

Although the exact words might change each night (thus requiring live subtitling rather than captioning), the punchlines and overall structure will stay the same.  Part of their skill is making it sound spontaneous.