Stagetext archive
Overview
Archive of Stagetext, a registered charity which provides captioning and live subtitling services to theatres and other arts venues to make their activities accessible to people who are d/Deaf, deafened, or hard of hearing. This archive was created for the Captions Speak Louder: Discovering the Story of Open Captioning project, aimed at telling the story of how open captioning was developed and established in the UK, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Stagetext began as a grassroots, deaf-led charity, started by three people with a passion for theatre who found themselves unsatisfied with the options available for deaf, deafened, and hard of hearing people who wish to attend theatre performances.
It started back in March 2000, when a group of deaf and hard of hearing Americans travelled over to London and organised two captioned theatre performances. Hearing about these captioned performances, Peter Pullan, Merfyn Williams and Geoff Brown, the future founders of Stagetext, all attended as guests. All three had varying types of deafness and a determination to improve access to the performing arts for deaf, deafened, and hard of hearing people in the UK.
The success of these shows led Peter, Merfyn and Geoff to debate the future, not wanting to wait for the American visitors to bring their caption unit back to London they decided to try and do something themselves. They decided to form Stagetext, a registered charity offering captioning services and training to theatres across the UK. Stagetext was officially established in May 2000, and the three founders visited several theatres and talked to theatre management to gauge their reactions to the idea. In November 2000, the Royal Shakespeare Company agreed to allow Stagetext to caption a performance and Stagetext’s first captioned performance, a Royal Shakespeare Company production of 'The Duchess of Malfi', was held in the Barbican Theatre, London on 15th November 2000.
Peter, Merfyn, and Geoff advocated for venues across the country to offer captioned performances of their productions, providing equipment, technical support, captioners and expertise to these venues. Over the next few years Stagetext’s profile increased, with many high-profile venues availing of Stagetext services. In 2002 Stagetext opened their first office in Wembley, hiring an administrator and programme manager. In 2003 John Suchet became a Patron of Stagetext (now stepped down) and in the same year Stagetext captioned their first West End musical ‘Les Misérables’, in the Palace Theatre, London. In 2005 Tabitha Allum was appointed the first Chief Executive, and the Stagetext team began to grow steadily to keep up with the demand for the service. Stagetext also became a go to organisation for training captioners and technicians, offering a Certificate in Theatre Captioning. Stagetext also began providing live subtitling in cultural venues, as well as offering a digital subtitling service for pre-recoded videos.
Over the years many theatres started to purchase their own captioning equipment, and staff or local people have been trained as captioners by Stagetext. This can be more cost-effective for theatres and enables them to programme more captioned performances and develop new audiences from their area. The Royal Shakespeare Company was the first production company to purchase captioning equipment and begin providing captions for shows in Stratford-on-Avon, London, and on tour, followed by Plymouth Theatre Royal.
In 2006, Stagetext and VocalEyes won a joint award of over £1million to extend access to the theatre for deaf, deafened, hard of hearing, blind and partially sighted people - the 3-year See a Voice project (SAV). The project resulted in an increase in captioning and audio description around England. Groups of theatres and venues joined the project to share equipment and local captioners.
In 2015, Stagetext celebrated its 15th anniversary by organising the first ever Captioning Awareness Week, which has been an annual event every year since. The aim of the week is to bring together cultural venues and caption users from all over to celebrate and raise awareness of captioning and subtitling.
The organisation is still expanding its reach, in hope of allowing as many people as possible to avail of captioning, and to improve access to the arts for the deaf, deafened, and hard of hearing community.
What the collection holds
The archive includes physical and digital records related to the formation of Stagetext, major events in Stagetext history, and significant projects undertaken by Stagetext. It also includes feedback, correspondence, promotional material, audio-visual and photographic material from Stagetext's history, as well as oral history interviews with key people from Stagetext history.
The online catalogue can be viewed here:
Further information
