Jo Verrent: My most accessible Edinburgh Fringe ever, thanks to live subtitles

I’ve been going up to Edinburgh Fringe for 20 years, sometimes just for a day or so, sometimes for a week. And it’s always been a frustrating experience (for many people, not just those who are D/deaf).

Billed as ‘The world’s greatest platform for creative freedom’ there is no limit to the number of shows that can be on and no selection process – if you want to come up and put on work, and can find a venue, then you can. This year it meant there were in excess of 30,000 performances of more than 2000 shows.

This year I went to see 13 shows, 7 events (lectures or presentations) and 3 exhibitions. Of the shows, three were D/deaf led performances: Scored in Silence by Chisato Minimamura, Louder is not always Clearer by Jonny Cotsen, and Knock, Knock by Hot Coals.

Three had creative captions and/or BSL embedded within the work: Purposeless Movements by Birds of Paradise (captions and/or BSL), I’m a Phoenix, Bitch by Bryony Kimmings (exceptional BSL by Katie Fenwick), Vessel by Sue MaClaine (captions although there was a technical problem so they weren’t on but she sent me a script immediately – no worries, a bad tech day can happen to anyone).

And a couple were mainly visual: 111 by Joel Brown and Eva Mutso, a dance piece, and Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial Salvation by Tim Crouch – where you are given a book of the script to read from along with and sometimes in place of the actors. Even most of the events had BSL and / or captions (some automatically and some on demand). 

Of course, some of the work I wanted to see didn’t have captions or BSL (or didn’t have them on the day I wanted to see the work). And this year, there was a game changer for these situations. I could buy my ticket and an access ticket (which was free), and take in Claire Hill with me.

She would then live subtitle the performance and I’d sit where ever I wanted in the audience with my own little screen. GAME. CHANGER. I got to see Dressed by This Egg, Alaska by Cheryl Martin and Believers are but Brothers by Javaad Alipoor. All of them, but particularly the last one, would have been inaccessible to me otherwise. No amount of lip reading can help when the stage is dark or the main actor is turned away from you for large portions of the time.

Claire explained what was happening in a blog here in July and you can see the amount of shows that her team covered across the Fringe here. It’s an incredible workload, but the ‘take in a captioner’ approach is the real new kid on the block.

Yes I prefer it when the captions are integrated into the aesthetic of a show (no neck strain as you try and look at both a screen and the show) but I’m a realist, and I’m not sure it’s ever going to work for 100% of shows. Especially as I often want to see experimental work by solo artists or small companies that are trying out fresh ideas, and who are often under extreme financial pressure. 

This Fringe, I got to feel like everyone else. It was my choice – the show, the day, the time. For the first time ever at the Fringe, I felt equal.

How did the artists and companies respond? Awesomely. Dressed is often captioned, but it was new to the others and they were warm, welcoming and downright helpful (especially Javaad’s team as the show is quite word-dependant with many specific names and locations).

The free spirit, part of the Fringe’s values and ethos, can make it hard – hard to choose what to see, hard to work out what access is in place and hard to know if it’s a piece ‘for you’. Physical access is difficult, so many venues aren’t usually venues, and Edinburgh itself is a cobbled, multi layered city.

Lots is problematic – a friend of mine was repeatedly told this year she was a fire risk – but also the Fringe Society are doing lots to try and improve access. They even won an award this year. There was also a great Deaf Edinburgh page set up on Facebook by Trudi Collier which was brilliant for bringing information together.

If I got to give out an award for Fringe access, mine would go to Claire Hill and her team. The ‘caption on demand’ service is currently provided voluntarily, something they’d like to change. They need to prove it works (it does) and then lobby to make it part of the standard offer. This kind of innovation is what we need to really open up the field. I had so many conversations with international visitors to the Fringe who were in awe of the access the UK can provide.

In the current political climate I reckon we need to keep holding on to the few things the UK is doing well.

NB: I know two of the shows I saw actually weren’t part of the Fringe Festival, they were in the International Festival. It’s complicated!

Jo believes that ‘different’ is delicious not divergent, embedding the belief that diversity adds texture, turning policy into real action. Jo is currently the senior producer for Unlimited – the world’s largest commissions programme for disabled artists, working to get work seen, discussed and embedded within the cultural fabric of the UK and beyond.