A new film featuring deaf, deafened and hard of hearing theatregoers talking about their experience of captioning has been produced by STAGETEXT.

Getting More Theatre For Your Bucks aims to raise awareness of captioned performances among the many thousands of audience members who find they miss what’s being said or sung, but who don’t know that captioning is available and how it might help them get more enjoyment out of seeing a show.

Caption users talk about the sheer enjoyment of being able to follow everything that’s happening on stage – laughing at the jokes along with everyone else instead of feeling excluded, and the thrill of sharing a trip to the theatre again with their family and friends.

“It makes me just feel young again.  Instead of being 80, I’m back to 30 and it’s wonderful!” says one lady.

10 million people in the UK are deaf, deafened or hard of hearing and the figure is increasing: 40% of people over the age of 50 and 70% of people over 70 have age-related hearing loss.
“There’s a huge invisible audience for captioned theatre,” says Tabitha Allum, Chief Executive of STAGETEXT.  “While around 5% of any audience will book specifically for the captions, anything up to 30% will make use of them. We hope this film is one way of reaching even more people who could benefit.”

For more information on captioning and forthcoming captioned performances, visit www.stagetext.org