SAN ANTONIO — Actors portraying the Cratchit family signed for the crowd as they sang “Hark the Herald Angels Sing," at the Public Theater, San Antonio on Saturday.
They were performing a familiar story in a way San Antonio has never seen. A Christmas Carol is, for many, an essential part of the Christmas experience.
"It is such a foundational story not only for our Christmas experience, but also just our experiences as people," said Jimmy Moore, Producing Artistic Director for The Public Theater of San Antonio.
But it can be a challenge for people with sensory impairments to experience it properly. Artists and advocates in San Antonio are working to change that. One way is by allowing American Sign Language to take to the stage during A Christmas Carol the Public Theater of San Antonio, once known as the San Pedro playhouse.
"They have had an interpreter before,” Moore said. “But our show is using them really as storytellers within the piece as a whole, which is really new for San Antonio,"
Of course, those hand signs would only mean something to people who could see them. but those with visual impairments were able to tune into a live interpreter describing the events on stage. In-between lines of dialogue, they would hear a voice saying things like "Scrooge hung his head in shame," or "Tiny Tim simply smiles and signs Merry Christmas to Scrooge."
"I have some functional vision but big blind spots in the center of my vision with better peripheral vision," said Cindy Watson, President and CEO of Vibrant Works, who attended the performance.
“I'm able to discern that there's people on the stage and moving around. But I really couldn't give. You a lot of detail about the props on the set,” Watson said. “There's quite a lot that I'm missing visually that the audio description fills in the blanks for me.”
Vibrant Works, formerly known as lighthouse for the blind, worked with The Public Theater to develop live audio description services for the performance through the Listen Anywhere app.
"Extremely proud moment," Watson said. "Also, to have the added element of the ASL interpretation happening with all of the actors on stage, which is super unique and the launch of our live audio description services all at the same performance was extremely moving for me.”
More performances are set to provide the service in the future, including Midsummer Sueño, on April 14th, West Side Story on June 2nd, and the Wizard of Oz on August 4th. They hope for the future this helps bring the gift of the performing arts to more people than ever before.
“It's been a really beautiful and unique experience in my career to truly be able to transcend boundaries and languages and create community with a show like this,” Moore said.