An interview with Jen Sullivan: How Derby Theatre’s Departure Lounge festival is expanding deaf access

Departure Lounge Festival returns to Derby Theatre this year with a growing focus on deaf access, BSL interpretation and captioning. I spoke to Executive Producer Jen Sullivan about how the festival has evolved, what access is available this year, and where they hope to go next.

Hi Jen! Firstly can you tell me who you are, your role and involvement in Departure Lounge.

I’m Jen, Executive Producer at In Good Company, and I lead on Producing and Programming Departure Lounge Festival.

For those who are completely out of the theatre loop, what IS Departure Lounge? Why does it have that name?

Departure Lounge Festival is Derby’s Fringe Festival, held every year at Derby Theatre. It’s called Departure Lounge because historically it has been a place for Midlands-made work to be showcased before ‘taking off’ to Edinburgh fringe.

To this day, the festival continues to present a whole range of experiences and performances. We take over the whole building, even meeting rooms with Midlands-made and other nationally significant work.

The programme is new performances; work still in development and work you might not otherwise see. The primary audience is the freelance workforce who In Good Company works with all year round.

It’s a chance to network and feel connected to the artistic community. But there’s something for everyone, so we get other audiences who are interested to see different things happening at Derby Theatre as well.

How are deaf/hard of hearing theatre goers considered in this festival? What have you put in place and who decided this?

Being based at Derby Theatre, who have longstanding relationships with deaf communities in the region, it has been really important to us to bring this through to the festival. Provision has changed each year as experience teaches us more about best practice.

The artistic community have been really generous and supportive with advice, and we’ve been working with Access Consultants, the brilliant Quiplash, on wider festival access as well.

This year, all events on Thursday and Friday are supported by BSL interpreters except the two workshops. Saturday performances are captioned.

We work with a Deaf access consultant who looks at the programme and helps us prioritise which events we should concentrate on.

In an ideal world, the full programme would be made accessible and in previous years we’ve achieved full BSL interpreted coverage. It all comes down to our budget and the availability of qualified BSL interpreters, and the access consultant helps us map this out.

How do you choose interpreters for these events? Do you have any customer feedback or monitoring for the BSL?

It’s important to us to build our own relationships with freelance interpreters. For the past couple of years, we’ve worked with a brilliant freelance performance interpreter who helps us co-ordinate interpreters for the festival.

Together, we consider the level of experience and training of the registered interpreters we’re working with, ensuring only interpreters with specialist skills are booked for performances.

We consider the characters addressing the audience, and which interpreters are best to represent their voice to Deaf and Hard of Hearing audiences.

We do have feedback from audiences which is always supportive and helpful, and helps us improve the process for choosing interpreters year on year.

How popular is Departure Lounge with deaf theatregoers at present?

It’s a steady build! I think we needed to do a lot of learning to get to where we are now, and it takes time for this to come through and translate into audiences.

We put a lot of time and resources behind the access provision for the festival and if it removes barriers for even one individual, that’s a win – obviously we’d like as many people as possible to access though!

I think it comes down to relationships, and they take time to build. With Quiplash, we’re beginning to explore ways of embedding pan-disability access in as much of IGC’s practice as possible, beyond the festival.

We’ve recently appointed an Associate Producer whose role is to help us build relationships and profile among Deaf and disabled artists and audiences, all the while helping us learn about different experiences of access so we can up our game.

In time, I hope this will come through and the festival audience will be more representative of Deaf and disabled people.

What would you say the main obstacles are for deaf theatregoers or creatives when it comes to attending festivals, and how do you overcome these?

As far as I’m aware, one of the main barriers is the language barrier.

This year we’ve booked a show that is performed in BSL, Mess by Laura Goulden (only a few tickets left!) This has been a great way to overcome the language barrier, cutting out the need for interpreters entirely.

Hearing audiences can enjoy the performance via headsets with voiceover actors. I’ve seen some of the show and it’s great, the script is fantastic and the company have worked really hard to help an integrated audience of Deaf and hearing people share an experience together.

Mess has been a turning point for our programming and we will be looking for work with integrated access for every year going forward.

I think another barrier is representation, so we will increase the amount of work we book that is made by deaf artists as well as representation in all areas of the programme.

Tell us about the highlights of the festival that are accessible in BSL or captioned?

Well, I’ve already raved about Mess! I always want to highlight everything, but to choose two things I’d say make sure you see Philosophy of the World (BSL interpreted), it’s going to be a riot, and LOVE**WORK which is captioned.

Arnold & Komarov Travelling Theatre are a Swiss company, and it’s amazing to welcome international work to Derby. Their show is about what they describe as the “cornerstones of human existence” (love and work). I think it will be a really unifying experience for audiences.

Any other news for us?

You can find out more about BSL interpretation and other access provision in the festival brochure, including audio description by Hear the Picture.

Departure Lounge launches this Thursday 2nd July until Saturday 4th July 2026 at Derby Theatre. For more information see here.