What is Go-Theatrical!™ Theatre Captioning

Go-Theatrical!™ captioning for live theatre typically involves two different types of captioning –
pre-prepared captioning and realtime captioning.

Pre-prepared captioning is used when script material is provided in advance of a performance.  The captions, as blocks of text, are displayed on the screen as the words are spoken and are very easy to read. 

Realtime captioning is a specialist type of captioning which is used when script material is not available or to caption any ad lib lines or completely live performances.  The Captioning Studio has a team of highly skilled and experienced stenocaptioners who use shorthand machines to key in text which then appears on the caption display.  Our elite stenocaptioners key at speeds between 220 and 280 words per minute, enabling the text to be displayed very shortly after the words are actually spoken.

The Captioning Studio generally uses a combination of both types of captioning during a performance, although should a performance be unscripted, we would use realtime captioning throughout.

Our Go-Theatrical!™ Technology

At The Captioning Studio we have developed and patented Go-Theatrical!™, our theatre captioning system using LCD or plasma screen TV displays, which we believe has many benefits over the traditional LED displays used predominantly in the USA and the UK.

Our caption display gives the option of having more lines of text on the screen than traditional systems.   This may be beneficial in performances which have fast dialogue or which are particularly visual. We can also configure the height of the text and the character font.

Another advantage of our technology is that it does not smooth-scroll the lines of text continuously upwards, which means that our captions are not difficult to read.  

Rather than having to identify speaker changes by prefacing actors’ lines with the names of their individual characters, The Captioning Studio uses different colours on screen, similar to the system used for television captioning, which Australian audiences are familiar with.  We also position individual captions on screen corresponding to the position of the actor on stage.  By removing the need for always displaying speaker names and thereby reducing the amount of text to read, audience members have significantly more time to enjoy the on-stage action and also find reading the captions a more enjoyable and less tiring experience!

We believe that these features make our Go-Theatrical!™ captioning technology unique.