340394 UE Audio Description for the Stage (2021S)

This hands-on course taught in English provides the necessary conceptual framework and guidelines for the creation of audio description (AD). Focusing on audio description for the theatre, it first provides a short definition of AD and its production process. It then presents how content is created in an AD process and provides examples and techniques to be used in this process. It discusses the relevant components of a theatre performance and how individual elements need to be dealt with so that blind and visually impaired audiences can fully grasp its form and content.
A description of the target audience is provided together with a discussion of central issues in AD: characters, spatio-temporal settings, action on stage, intertextual references. Wording and style, visual language, as well as cohesion and coherence of the AD are discussed and examples of previous AD created by professionals are provided.
This course follows a project-based approach and introduces the above content in a hands-on format where students work together, in teams, to create and deliver to the class an audio description in English, for a given theatre play.
On completion of this module, students should be able to:
- describe the specific nature of the audio description for the stage;
- display awareness of the needs of the target audience;
- display awareness of the challenges of creating audio descriptions for a theatre performance;
- demonstrate specific hands-on audio description skills e.g. text creation, character description, timing ;
- conform to and apply conventions of good practice;
- make informed choices on the basis of genre, purpose, and intended audience;
-critically assess the quality of a given AD;
- orient themselves in the specific research literature.