Workshop – Creative Audio Description (Lead: Sophia Neises)

In June 2022, Sophia Neises led a two-day workshop on Creative Audio Description.

Sophia Neises is a disabled performer and access dramaturg from Berlin. This means that Sophia examines the structure of a piece for accessibility. Her expertise is mainly in the field of audio description. Audio description translates the visual dimension of a piece into words. Sophia likes this work best when it is no longer just an after-the-fact service for blind and visually impaired audiences, but becomes part of the action on stage. To this end, Sophia has been learning about and trying out different ideas and methods over the past 3 years.

In the workshop “Creative Audio Description” Sophia invited disabled and non-disabled participants to get to know and develop creative audio description. It was important for her to include perspectives from a cross-disability community. Cross-disability means people with different disabilities. We bring different perspectives, each of which we can learn from to make our art more accessible and interesting.

All workshop participants had the opportunity to learn about audio description first. There were playful exercises for this, with enough practice time. The power-critical level of self-description was also addressed. In small groups or alone, performances with creative audio description were developed.