8/16/2023
Discovering The Smith Center
Of all the shows Niki White has experienced at The Smith Center, her favorites definitely include “Riverdance.”
She enjoyed the complex step and tap dancing, she says, plus the lavish, velvet costumes and the enormous set pieces.
It didn’t matter that White, a Las Vegas resident who is blind, couldn’t actually see any of this – because The Smith Center’s audio describer informed her of every visual detail on stage, allowing her to enjoy it fully.
“(The audio description) was insanely informative,” White says. “It was a lot of fantastic work.”
She represents one of many Southern Nevadans who utilize The Smith Center’s live audio description service, which the center offers at its Broadway shows throughout each year.
Provided for individuals who are blind or visually impaired, audio description involves a trained professional describing all of a show’s visuals in real time – including sets, choreography, costuming and facial expressions – which the patron hears through an earpiece.
“(It’s important because) of just how much it conveys to the people who are using it,” White says. “The biggest example would be choreography. Anyone can tell you ‘they’re dancing,’ but (audio describers) go into so much more detail.”
Now, thanks to its dedicated staff, The Smith Center just received national recognition for its high-quality audio description.
The American Council of the Blind named the center a winner of its 2023 Audio Description Project Awards, honoring people and organizations that make outstanding contributions to the quality, availability and understanding of audio description.
“It’s very rewarding, because (this program) took years to build, as part of The Smith Center’s mission to make the arts accessible to all,” says Sara Thielman, manager of guest experience. “It does my heart good to know this service helps visually impaired community members fully experience live theater.”
Building A Service from the Ground Up
Thielman and her team have invested tremendous effort to make this service a success.
“A lot of patrons wanted this service (when The Smith Center opened),” Thielman recalls. “They were pushing heavy and hard on it.”
To meet the demand, Thielman researched audio description, handpicked individuals with the necessary articulation and grammatical prowess, and organized their training with an internationally recognized specialist.
Now, the center offers audio description for several performances of every Broadway production.
Blind and visually impaired audience members often laud how they can at last enjoy performances without asking their companions to fill in details, she says.
“They feel empowered, and they feel included,” Thielman says. “To someone who’s sight impaired, to have this independence is priceless, because now they can enjoy all the magic occurring on stage.”
An Audio Describer from Broadway
The Smith Center offers top talent for its audio description.
This includes audio describer Dominic Mota, who served as an audio describer with Broadway productions for 10 years.
He even provided audio description for the Tony Awards for several years, with television audiences listening to his description around the globe.
This work taught him “a powerful lesson on how theater can change the emotional state of an audience,” he says. “When we are sad, mourning or feeling helpless, a rousing and highly choreographed number can make us feel hope and inspiration once more. Our work as audio describers is to ensure that our listeners can also experience those emotional shifts.”
A Significant Undertaking
Audio description requires a great deal of preparation and on-the-spot thinking, Mota says.
The Smith Center’s audio describers prepare for a Broadway show by reviewing its script weeks in advance. They also view one performance of the show, during which they take copious notes about any costumes, props, lights, choreography and performer expressions that they will need to describe.
“It is quite a bit to notate, so we must move quickly,” Mota says.
They further polish the notes to provide “a pleasant and interesting audio experience” for listeners, he adds, and prepare pre-show and intermission notes to help listeners understand as much as possible.
He finds every show has its own challenges, as he describes it from a room at the back of Reynolds Hall. For instance, some shows like “SIX” feature improvisation that must be described as it occurs.
“Theater is a living, breathing thing that changes with every performance, so we must be on our toes,” he says.
All of the work proves worthwhile, Mota says, when patrons tell him how much they loved a show.
“Having any small part in bringing joy into the lives of these people means more to me than I could ever — ironically — describe,” he says.
One of Many Accessibility Services
Thielman encourages community members to explore the variety of accessibility services offered at The Smith Center.
The center provides assistive-listening devices and closed-captioning devices for the hearing impaired and deaf, as well as ASL interpretation and “curb to seat” wheelchair assistance. All performances include wheelchair and mobility-assisted seating.
“The Smith Center team remains highly committed to making theater inclusive,” she says. “We want to provide the joy of live theater for community members who wouldn’t otherwise have that opportunity.”
LEARN MORE
To learn more about accessibility services at The Smith Center, CLICK HERE.