Shakespeare For Blind Actors

Steve Gladstone is blind. At the age of 17, he was diagnosed during a routine exam with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), which is a degenerative disease that causes a progressive loss of vision.
“It happened over a long period of time. I was sighted half of my life and I´ve been blind half of my life. It´s been frustrating with the progression of the disease. But, most of the characters I play on the stage are not blind. I wind up playing able-bodied characters that are sighted as very few blind characters show up in classical literature or are written into scripts. Being blind is something that can be hidden to an audience,” Gladstone explained.

– Pam Vetter, Florida Actor Encourages Early Education for Change in Acceptance of Performers with Disabilities

Many companies already have policies against racial discrimination, what some call “colour-blind casting”. This means that black actors are no longer limited to Othello. Members of any ethnicity can be seen in Shakespeare, because many of us are against discrimination.

The same is not true of actors with disabilities. In most auditions, a visually impaired person will not even be considered for a role that is not explicitly blind. In fact, blind characters are portrayed in most cases by sighted actors. The most famous examples are Al Pacino in “Scent of a Woman,” and more recently Jamie Foxx in “Ray.” If we install ramps in every public building and expect corporations to hire employees regardless of physical handicap, we should not exclude the theatre from our standards of fairness. Sight impaired actors should not be excluded from performing, and we should do whatever we can to level the playing field.

Challenge 1: Movement, Blocking, Action

Sighted actors rely on glow-tape to find their way around a darkened backstage, and not to step off the lip of the stage when the lights go to black. It should be easy for an actor to imagine what it would be like without any visual cues. In everyday life, visually impaired people must use other means to move around without bashing into things or falling. In the street, many use either a “seeing-eye dog” or a cane. On the other hand, at home or in familiar places, they are so accustomed to the placement of walls, stairs and furniture that they can move around from mere memory.

You will never work with an actor with more precise blocking than a blind actor. At their accurate cue, they will turn the correct angle, walk the necessary number of paces and reach out a hand in the exact place to take their hat off a rack. They memorize their movements with accuracy and reproduce them exactly, though not robotically, every time. But this precision can only be achieved through rehearsal and with a director who understands this need.

New Life, a theatre company composed entirely of visually-impaired performers, prefer to stage comedies because the auditory feedback from the murmuring and laughing audience helps the actors orient themselves better than the austere silence of viewers of tragedy. Since all the actors are in the same boat, their entire rehearsal process is geared around solutions for their actors.

Challenge 2: Lines

There are three traditional methods for a blind actor to learn their lines: partner work, computer text-to-speech, braille reading.
Braille
Braille reading is one more step of interpretation and therefore bad for memorization of spoken lines, as discussed in another article. You don’t want your brain learning by touch, and translating into speech, because that’s an inefficient use of your sensory modalities. It’s important to learn sounds (speech) from sounds (hearing).
Partner
A dedicated scene partner is a great resource. The partner reads the lines and the actor repeats. If there are any mistakes, the partner can correct him. Partners need to drill the actor’s lines and their cue lines which is very time-intensive. The New Life company drill lines together in rehearsals until they are perfect, and only then do they start moving. If you are the only blind actor, don’t expect a troupe to cater to you in this way.
Text-to-speech
Computer text-to-speech is an amazing innovation. If you are sight impaired, it is likely that your computer is reading this webpage aloud to you right now. For those with limited experience of this type of software, you probably think that everything sounds like Steven Hawking, but in fact there have been enormous advancements in speech synthesis, and in many cases it sounds like a real person. (Hawking did not upgrade because he identifies with the voice as his own.)
As far as text-to-speech has come, it still does not do well with the rhythm of the lines in Shakespeare, since they are programmed for sentences, not verse. On top of that, Shakespearean vocabulary is often not represented well, and the computer will have problems with contractions. In the sample, listen for the butchering of “solemnized” and “se’nnight”.

Rosalind
Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the
contract of her marriage and the day it is solemniz’d; if the
interim be but a se’nnight, Time’s pace is so hard that it seems
the length of seven year.

[dewplayer:http://www.memorizeshakespeare.com/sample/rosalind-line092-TTS.mp3]

The Superior Alternative
ScenePartner works exactly like partner drills, but without inconveniencing another person. The expert readers always pronounce the lines clearly, and with the appropriate rhythm. Download our audio files to listen and repeat the lines. Then do the same for cues.

[dewplayer:http://www.memorizeshakespeare.com/sample/rosalind-line092.mp3]

Notice how it is natural and best of all, properly pronounced. You’ll also remark that the tone is neutral, so that you can add your own acting and vocal inflections, not forced to imitate acting choices from the reader.

Challenge 3: Artistic Justification

A black actor can play any role in which the lines do not betray skin colour, and a blind actor can portray any role where sight is not explicitly needed. A king can be blind, but not Lear: even in the first scene, he says “Hence and avoid my sight!” to Cordelia and “Out of my sight!” to Kent, who responds with, “See better, Lear, and let me still remain The true blink of thine eye.” Then, just before exiting, he announces to the King of France, “Thou hast her, France; let her be thine, for we Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see That face of hers again.” Then, at the end of the play, his final words are “Do you see this? Look on her! Look her lips, Look there, look there -” A director could cut these lines, but they are memorable, and some would say integral to the scene and the character.

On the other hand, the role of King Henry IV could be reinterpreted for a blind actor. Although he says things like “Look who comes here,” it may be imagined that he did not actually see the person, but recognized the sound of their walk or their smell, or even have an advisor whisper in his ear when others approach.

Finally, given sufficient rehearsal time and a good director, the audience might never know. Like Steve Gladstone and the precision of the New Life company, the blind actor could play a sighted character. In that case no justification is necessary.