Rebecca-Anne Withey: The Jungle Book at Derby Theatre (and the importance of giving feedback)

I wonder how many Limping Chicken readers have been to see live shows during the Easter holidays? Were they accessible? Enjoyable? I’d love to know more.

The reason I ask is because as a family we went to see The Jungle Book at Derby Theatre. I wrote about the show in a previous article. We were all excited to see how the production fared, seeing as it was the first BSL integrated show for Derby Theatre.

The theatre was absolutely jam packed when we went. We had been allocated seats in the middle of the auditorium, and luckily we had time to browse the information stands and enjoy the promotional BSL videos before we went in.

In the foyer there was an access stand which enabled theatre goers to get a preview of the sensory elements of the show; the colours, props and part of the headwear worn by the monkeys.

It was a great aspect to have especially for curious, visual children, and mine loved the fact that you could buy monkey headgear and tails to wear and join in with the monkeying around!

Inside the show’s programme there was an introduction to BSL fingerspelling, and games where children could learn how to decipher a BSL word search and even finger spell their own name.

Clearly Derby Theatre have really embraced BSL and it’s evident in all the thoughtful additions they’ve created.

It was great to see so many members of the Deaf community attending the show, and we even spotted some famous Deaf CBeebies faces – much to my daughters amazement! 😲

But now, onto the nitty gritty.

Hand on heart, The Jungle Book is a good show. And there were some absolutely smashing parts where the sign singers were dead centre, all eyes on them, and they really, truly OWNED the stage.

But I feel it is important to also feedback the parts of the production that – for me – didn’t really work.

1. The captions were far too high for my liking. I found it disorientating having to look upwards to read the text and then downwards again for the action. I managed to resolve this issue by asking to move seats right to the back of the theatre and this made for much more comfortable viewing.

2. Sometimes the distance between the actors speaking and the “interpreting” actors was too far apart. This meant I missed vital body language, movement and action that was important to the story. There were some parts where the placement was JUST RIGHT but this wasn’t consistent throughout the show and at times I missed the BSL interpretations because I wanted to see what the main actor was doing.

3. The spoken pace was occasionally too quick for the captions. There were times when I wanted to slooooow all of the dialogue right down because the captions were firing off too fast for me to read them. Or even more pauses would have been great!

On the plus side, this is what the show did EXTREMELY WELL;

1. There were times when the whole cast were signing and I could have squealed in delight! These were integrated hearing and deaf actors all using BSL in the delivery of the story. No matter their background or sign language proficiency or the fact that some had never ever signed before. Wow! One song in particular, Look Well of Wolves, was extraordinary as the cast used symmetrical signs across the stage to depict the bowing wolves. It really brought BSL to the fore and celebrated its strength as a beautiful, visual language and art form.

2. A lot of effort had gone into the musical pieces, and it reaaaaally paid off. The use of live instruments, the sign song translations, the choreography – they all fused wonderfully to bring the songs to life. I must also say that Emily Rose Salter was fantastic as a sign song performer (and actor!) as she used the whole of her body to become the music and demanded attention with mesmerising stage presence.

3. It felt really easy to access the show, right from the time of booking. The box office had a text number for deaf customers and they created BSL videos beforehand explaining the characters and terminology used in the show. Even the front of house staff were easy to communicate with and so deaf aware.

I feel it’s important that we feedback to shows what they did well and also what they could improve for next time. If we don’t give feedback then they aren’t given the opportunity to create shows that we will go back watch time and time again.

With The Jungle Book, I feel the team could have benefitted from sending in a group of deaf people to preview the captions, perhaps sit in on a rehearsal run through – this might have highlighted the placement, speed and caption issues I experienced. Maybe it could have enabled deaf people to choose where they prefer to sit for comfortable caption viewing – as we all have different preferences after all and what works for me may not work for you and vice versa.

I am so grateful to Derby Theatre for producing this show, and I take my hat off to the creatives and actors involved. It was an enjoyable show and most certainly made history in the Derby. Here’s to the next one!

Rebecca-Anne Withey is a freelance writer with a background in Performing Arts & Holistic health. Read more of Rebecca’s articles for us here.

She is also profoundly deaf, a sign language user and pretty great lipreader. 

Her holistic practices and qualifications include Mindfulness, Professional Relaxation Therapy, Crystal Therapy and Reiki. 

She writes on varied topics close to her heart in the hope that they may serve to inspire others.