Briefly in English:
Creative accessibility in the DuvTeatern Theatre Company’s TIKSI project
Watch the 12-minute video Creative Accessibility: an introduction below, with English subtitles.
What is creative accessibility?
Creative accessibility is an artistic strategy in the performing arts where accessibility is built in from the earliest stages of a theatrical production. Accessibility solutions will be embedded in the whole production process, beginning at the planning phase. Accessibility will guide and inspire the artistic choices and expressions made by the whole production team. Every member of the artistic team will be involved: the scenographer, sound, light, video and costume designers, the director and the actors. In this way the accessibility solutions are not practical solutions imposed as an afterthought on the finished production but rather form the very tools of its creation.
Creative accessibility spotlights ethical issues in stage production. Accessibility for the audience is made an artistic rather than a practical matter at the same time as the accessibility of the production process for a diverse production team is taken into account. At its best, creative accessibility brings us a more democratic experience of the performing arts, where a more diverse range of theatre goers gain the opportunity to enjoy a rich and ambitious artistic experience realised by a more representative production team.
Theatre workers share their experiences
This website showcases examples of creative accessibility in action in the performing arts, with the production team and accessibility consultants in our production Livsfarligt på allvar! - ett svårtolkat mordmysterium (Seriously life-threatening! – a hard to interpret murder mystery) sharing their experiences of working in this model. The show ran in the autumn of 2024 at The Swedish Theatre in Helsinki, Finland’s largest Swedish language stage. This was a co-production between DuvTeatern, The Theatre Academy of Uniarts Helsinki and the Swedish Theatre. Read more about the production on DuvTeatern’s website.
The show Livsfarligt på allvar! was a key part of DuvTeatern’s three-year development project named TIKSI – an acronym in Swedish for “accessibility as artistic strategy and inspiration”. Our aim with TIKSI was to develop new practices in Finnish theatre and broaden the diversity and inclusion of both artists and audience. Funded by the Kone Foundation, Helsinki City and the Swedish Cultural Fund, TIKSI sought to increase public awareness and understanding of creative accessibility and to develop new methods of accessible working in the performing arts.
TIKSI, hosted by DuvTeatern, is inspired by the British company Ramps on the Moon and has been fortunate to benefit from the mentorship of the company’s Director for Change, Michèle Taylor. Michèle also visited the international seminar “Creative Accessibility in the Performing Arts” in Helsinki in the autumn of 2025. There is more on the seminar in English and clips from Michèle’s presentation on the TIKSI Seminar page.
One show – three approaches to accessibility
There are many possible approaches to accessibility in the performing arts. With Livsfarligt på allvar! the aim was to create an accessible mainstream theatre production in an established theatre. Three focal points were chosen for the work, namely sign language, audio description and easy language. Each approach is summarized below.
Sign language and spoken language on stage together
Sign language is most straightforwardly integrated into a spoken performance by the use of signing actors. Sign language interpretation may also be woven into the fictional world of the performance. In the show Livsfarligt på allvar! signing actor Silva Belghiti and sign language interpreter Ellen Hoang, who also took on an acting role in the play, were employed both as members of the cast and as our sign language consultants.
The audience has a very different experience when the signing actor is a part of the performance on stage than when there is a sign language interpreter standing at the edge of the stage.
Silva Belghiti, sign language actor
With two signing actors in the cast it was possible to combine sign language and spoken language in a number of different ways, such as:
- Writing some of the scenes in such a way that all the characters were seen to communicate and understand each other irrespective of language. The spoken lines and signed lines repeated parts of the other, so that all essential information was given in both languages.
- Some scenes contained parallel dialogue where one exchange would take place between signing characters and another exchange between speaking characters. The exchanges were different yet conveyed essentially similar content.
- Signing characters would act as narrator for a period of time, signing the lines delivered by speaking actors.
- Bilingual characters were created and used in certain scenes as interpreters between signed and spoken language.
- Content was amplified by visual elements such as projected text and video animation, to enhance audience comprehension.
Lighting design is important in the use of sign language on stage. The lighting needs to highlight the hands and faces of signing actors. Visual elements may also convey the same information to the deaf or signing audience members as the hearing audience and actors receive from sounds.
Creative audio description
The visual elements of a stage performance usually convey much vital information about the story and the atmosphere of the play. Audio description supports visually impaired and blind audience members to access the visual content by means of words and sound. A traditional audio describer translates visual content into words delivered through individual head sets to the audience. In creative audio description, information normally conveyed through visual elements is also conveyed through sound and dialogue on stage.
In Livsfarligt på allvar! singer and pedagogue Riikka Hänninen served as audio description consultant, helping us identify the need for audio description as well as its creative possibilities. Our ambition was to enable blind theatre goers to have the same foundational information about each scene as the seeing audience.
The most important thing for a blind member of the audience is to know what is actually happening on stage.
Riikka Hänninen, audio description consultant
We used creative audio description in several ways:
- Descriptions of environments and actions were written into the script. Narrators described settings and scenarios in the style and manner of the performance. Lines would contain visual description delivered in a style in keeping with the character.
- The narrative function of sound and music was enhanced to express actions, transitions and atmospheres more explicitly.
- Costume design supported the sound narration through the choice of fabrics and shoes according to the sounds they made. For example, when the main character enters the stage, we hear the hard clacking of her heels, signifying the worldly and purposeful aspects of her character.
Creative easy communication and a supportive working environment
Easy language refers to language that is easy or easier to understand, using easy words and clear explanations. Easy language does not have to mean that the actual content being communicated is in any way simplified or superficial. Easy language is closely connected to a working environment with space for a range of ways of communicating and support from colleagues where needed.
We make plays by writing them ourselves. We improvise different roles and write about the different characters.
Roy Eriksson, actor, DuvTeatern.
Actors and consultants with learning disabilities participated in Livsfarligt på allvar!. Creative easy language was embedded from the start in lines, narrative arc, artistic expression, visual elements and sound. The whole cast contributed to the script and plot of the show through improvisation and writing workshops. As the actors themselves wrote the lines the language on stage was primarily easy language. There was also narrators speaking easy language who could amplify the where, when and who of a scene. As part of the story, characters might sometimes ask each other for an explanation of a complex thought or event or for something to be said in easy language.
Time was given for the whole cast to get to know each other and develop shared ways of communication, to promote a more egalitarian and inclusive way of working. All the cast members supported each other on stage. This close-knit group work laid the foundation for the internal communication on stage of this diverse team and the creative accessibility inventions of the production. Cast members described it as being part of a communication web where each member was affected by the expressions and actions of the others.
We came together as a group on the stage, all woven into the same spider’s web.
Vega Adsten, acting student, The Theatre Academy
Creative accessibility is both an ethical approach and an artistic inspiration for a creative team. This way of working can open the performing arts to new performers, new modes of artistic expression and new audiences.
For more information contact:
Sanna Huldén
Managing Director
DuvTeatern
Email: sanna.hulden@duvteatern.fi -
Phone: +358 400 956 792
