“The Road to You,” a play performed at Hongik University’s Daehakro Arts Center Small Theater last October, is the story of a playwright who faces the end of humanity due to the climate crisis. It was created by playwright/director Han Min-gyu, who won the 2023 Today’s Playwright Award and the 2022 40th Korea Theater Festival Playwright Award. In Act 1, the author, who was writing a work on the theme of the climate crisis, gradually realized the seriousness of the climate crisis in 2023, and in Act 2, the play was presented until the end of 2043, even when the end was just around the corner due to a sudden rise in temperature, allowing the audience to feel the climate crisis. It is also impressive that while directly reminding us that we should no longer ignore the Earth in crisis, various keywords such as discrimination, solidarity, coexistence, animal rights, and the reason for the existence of theater were brought out on stage.
Hongik University’s Daehakro Art Center Small Theater, where “The Road to You” was performed, is a black box-type performance hall where the stage and audience can be freely arranged. “The Road to You” also had a unique structure in which curved walls were installed at both ends of a horizontally long stage and audience seats were installed on both sides, creating a more intimate relationship with the audience. Due to the structure of the audience facing each other, my gaze naturally went to the audience across from me, and I could see people watching the performance wearing unique glasses here and there. Why are they wearing these ‘unique glasses’?.
In fact, the glasses are actually smart glasses. Smart glasses are glasses-shaped devices that help people with hearing and speech impairments watch performances by displaying information that audiences need to learn when watching a performance, such as performance lines and sound effects, in Korean subtitles. It is easy to understand that when you wear glasses, a subtitle explanation screen appears on the right lens.
“The Road to You” is a work produced by the National Theater Company, and the introduction of smart glasses was a new attempt for the National Theater Company as well. Producer Kang Hyun-jung and Kim Na-rae, house manager of the National Theater of Korea, who led the introduction of smart glasses, said in unison, “This was our first attempt, but we are confident that it will become a good service in the future.”
Methods of operating subtitle services are largely divided into open and closed. The open format is where subtitles are transmitted through monitors installed in the theater and everyone in the audience can view the subtitles, and the closed format is where devices such as tablets are provided to each individual and the service is limited. The National Theater Company has mainly used an open method. However, due to the nature of the stage structure of “The Road to You”, there was bound to be a limited field of view no matter where the monitor was installed. As a result, while looking for another solution, house manager Kim Na-rae happened to hear that smart glasses had been introduced in a play performed in Busan, and she immediately set out to find a company specializing in smart glasses.
Smart glasses are originally AI-based machines that recognize voices and translate them into text. However, concerns that the dialogue would not be properly translated into subtitles due to overlap between the actor’s voice and sound effects during the performance combined with the desire to convey specific information to the audience by displaying background music and sound effects as subtitles, ultimately leading to the creation of subtitles for smart glasses. We chose to produce a commentary script separately, program it into the device, and play it back during the performance. The default setting for smart glasses was to display text that fills the screen, like a text message on a cell phone, but to improve readability and reduce eye fatigue, it was adjusted to not exceed a maximum of two lines, like movie subtitles. Producer Kang Hyun-jung and Kim Na-rae, house manager, explained that they went through a lot of trial and error before introducing the service, including adjusting font size and color that could easily be overlooked so that audiences using smart glasses could watch the performance in the best conditions.
Another impressive aspect is that auditory information is explained in text. “The Road to You” is characterized by vividly immersing the audience in various sounds that can be encountered in disaster situations, such as the sounds of natural phenomena such as storms and heavy rain, and sharp sirens. The work cleverly implemented such sound effects through subtitle commentary. In scenes where it is raining, a speaker-shaped emoticon, which represents a sound effect, and an umbrella-shaped emoticon, which represents rain, are used together. The simultaneous display of dialogue and sound effects helped audiences using smart glasses to understand the performance more deeply.
In this performance, the ‘Accessibility Session’, which provided a subtitle commentary service through smart glasses, was held for a short period of three days, but the two people evaluated themselves as a meaningful attempt. “Many users responded positively to being able to watch the performance and subtitles at the same time without having to look at the subtitle screen. It was a time when we confirmed the possibility of operating a smart glass service on a regular basis. “We will continue to devise various ways to increase performance accessibility until the day comes when disabled audiences can also choose seats according to their convenience.” (House Manager Kim Na-rae).
“I hope to create a stable performance viewing environment where disabled audiences can watch performances on any day they want, in any condition they want, without any restrictions. The National Theater Company also plans to continue its efforts to contribute to that change.” (Producer Kang Hyeon-jeong).
Source | The Musical
Trans/Shared By | Musical In Life
Musical in Life 