Webinar:Theatre Interpreting : the rehearsal room

Presenter: Michael Richardson

Theatre Interpreting: the rehearsal room

This webinar is one of two that explore interpreting in a theatre context.  The first (in November 2019) focuses onsign language interpreted performances (SLIPs).  Here the focus is interpreting in a theatre rehearsal room where the ensemble is made up of a mixed group of deaf and hearing actors.

Both sessions are based on research with deaf and hearing people carried out by the presenter as part of his PhD project.  The research presented in this webinar explored the potential for creating equality of participation for deaf and hearing people in theatrical performance processes.  The project interrogated participants’ actions within the rehearsal room, analysedthe material they created for performance, and compared the audience response to the performance with the intentions of the actors.

During this webinar I will focus on what happened in the rehearsal room.  Here two interpreters were employed to provide communication support, but the roles they were asked to adopt did not reflect other documented models of interpreting.  During the webinar I will describe the complexity of their role and how their decisions within the interpreting process impacted on both their own practice and on the research project as a whole.

I will conclude this webinar by considering the different and often conflicting aspects of the role of the interpreter in the rehearsal room.  Learning objectives are