Actors Yael Stone and Nathan O'Keefe in Brink Productions' Harbinger. Photo by Chris Herzfeld

NEWSFLASH!  Many venues will soon be offering both open captions on plasma/LCD screens AND closed captions with our new patented GoTheatrical! App which is now available on the App Store!  Stay tuned for details!

WORLD-FIRST!  Just announced – producer Andrew McKinnon’s ‘Dickens’ Women’ will be the first captioned performance in the world to offer both GoTheatrical! open captions on plasma/LCD screens AND GoTheatrical! captions on smartphones and tablets! Saturday, 23 February 2012 at 2pm at the Canberra Theatre Playhouse!

Captioned performances are provided using our proprietary GoTheatrical!™ technology, which has won numerous awards over the years. In fact, the technology has become so popular with Australian venues and patrons alike that it is now the only theatre captioning technology and service offered across the country.

What’s unique about GoTheatrical!™?

Firstly, the technology uses plasmas/LCD screens  for its caption display – and is also now available on smartphones and tablet devices via our new patented GoTheatrical! App.   We believe the GoTheatricl! screen types have many advantages over traditional captioning technology used elsewhere in the world, including:

• Plasma/LCD screens are inexpensive to purchase or hire. Readily available from local suppliers.
• Plasma/LCD screens are lightweight, easy to transport
• Allow for display of multiple coloured texts (colours specifically selected for ease of reading)
• Allow for up to 8 lines of text on screen, as opposed to just 3 with traditional captioning technology
• Coloured texts mean it is not necessary to preface dialogue with character names every time an actor speaks; for example, in scenes where there are only two characters on stage, there is no need to preface with character names every time they speak as colour change makes differentiation between actors’ lines very clear
• Allow for positioning of captions on screen to correspond with where the actors are located on stage, making characters’ lines easy to identify
• Allow for display of italicised texts and musical notes, making song lyrics and sound effect descriptions easy to identify
• Allow for up to 37 characters on a line, as opposed to only 32 with traditional captioning technology
• Allow for captions to be cued phrase by phrase, pop-up style, as opposed to smooth scrolling.
• Allow for more precise timing of the captions being cued to screen
• Glare issues minimised as handhelds are fitted with polarising filters and plasma/LCD screens allow for contrast ratios/brightness levels to be set to low and can be fitted with an inexpensive piece of sheer black cloth (completely invisible to the audience) that blocks out all glare during non-captioned segments of performances.
• Permit the display of accented letters on screen, so languages other than English can be displayed accurately. This is not possible with traditional captioning technology.

GoTheatrical!™ can be provided on both plasma/LCD screens and smartphone/tablet devices simultaneously at the same performances.  The Canberra Theatre Centre will be the first venue in the world to be offering such a service for its patrons, with many more venues to be announced soon!  Please note that our simultaneous open and closed captioning service provides ‘manually cued’ captioning, where the captions appear in sync with the dialogue.