On December 8, 28 LightHouse community members attended a performance of the musical FROZEN at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco. The performance included a preshow experience and live audio description.
The outing was spearheaded by LightHouse Adult Programs Coordinator, Maia Scott, who gave a recap.
“The whole experience was a joyous intergenerational community gathering. My mom was with me, and she agreed. This is my job; I get to take people out to play!”
And play they did! Maia described the preshow experience.
“We had the chance to go in at 5:30 pm, before the doors opened to the public, to enjoy the lounge space. A show manager, who is in charge of everything that happens offstage, shared some facts. It takes 20 semitrucks to move Frozen from city to city. There’s also a curtain of crystals that has a giant chart that covers the whole stage to align everything so that the crystal curtain hangs right. It weighs 2,000 pounds!
“The show manager also brought out some wigs worn in the show. There’s more than 90 and one of the main characters, Anna, wears six of them. These are the types of things we wouldn’t necessarily get in audio description.”
Speaking of the audio description, it was provided by local company Gravity Access Services.
“I really liked Gravity Access’ approach,” said Maia. “The audio describer and another ally come into the audience preshow to ensure everyone knew how to use their receiver headsets. This also gave people a chance to hear the voice of their audio describer before the show, so that they hear a familiar voice describing the show and not just a mystery person up in the top box.”
15 people used audio description, with the youngest being just five years old.
LightHouse student, Carol, spoke of the experience.
“It was phenomenal. I am truly appreciative of all the work Maia, as well as the Orpheum staff and the cast coordinator of the show put into this. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and I’m looking forward to another social outing with other LightHouse attendees.”
Maia also summed up her feelings.
“I love that Gravity Access has a very personable approach to audio description. I love that they have a relationship with LightHouse and will be working with us on student programming in the year to come.”
