Welcome!
My name is Dave, and I love theatre — especially musical theatre. I’m also hard of hearing, and wear hearing aids in both ears. This can sometimes make it challenging to enjoy going to the theatre.
I decided to start this site to share my experiences with each theatre I visit, as well as provide detailed information about what people can expect from the different types of assistive technology available. There might also be guest posts about other theatres around the world, or other types of disability.
My disability
As I mentioned earlier: I am hard of hearing. This term covers a wide range of conditions, so I think it’s useful to be more specific.
I have a condition called Ménière’s Disease, which is a disease of the inner ear — the part that converts sound into neural impulses. While I started out with close-to-average hearing, it has slowly deteriorated over time. The progression of the disease is uncertain, and it could stabilise or continue to full deafness. There’s unfortunately no way to tell.
I remember noticing the first symptoms around age 11: a persistent noise called tinnitus, mostly experienced on the right side. In my case, this is rather like a constant 1kHz pure tone, with other frequencies present but much less noticeable. The relative volume of this noise can change from hour to hour, sometimes being almost inaudible, and sometimes being loud enough to interfere with hearing other things.
On top of this near-constant phantom sound, I have hearing loss in both ears. My left ear is better, and on a good day it can be almost like there’s no loss at all. However my right ear can only hear very loud sounds without a hearing aid to help. I got my first hearing aid in my early 20’s, just for my right ear.
My first audiogram showed that the quietest sound I can hear is 65dB for low frequencies and around 15dB at high frequencies (which is just within normal range) for both ears. My left ear then jumped up to 30dB at worst (just below normal range) a couple of months later, and has been hugely variable since. It seems to hover around 35-45dB. My right ear has dropped to about 90dB now.
For reference, without a hearing aid… the quietest sound I can hear with my left ear is about the background level of a library or quiet residential area. The quietest sound I can hear with my right ear is around the level of a blender or a large vehicle (e.g. tractor) driving by. This is classified as mild–moderate loss in my left ear, and severe–profound in my right.
Finally, even when I can hear, my speech comprehension isn’t great. It can be surprisingly difficult to work out what words are being said even if I can lip-read. For some reason I find it much easier to understand speech when hearing it through headphones, so I lean towards using them whenever I can.
Enjoying the theatre
Hearing aids are not a complete solution, unfortunately. While they do make the sound louder, they don’t necessarily make it clearer or easier to understand. Musicals are generally easiest for me to understand (especially if I already know the music!) as they tend to be more predictable. However musicals with fast/unclear lyrics, particularly hip-hop and rap are incomprehensible to me. Plays are similarly much more difficult for me, especially if they are fast-paced. Strong/unfamiliar accents make understanding harder still.
For this reason, I tend to try and find audio assistance devices when going to the theatre. There’s a wide variety in what’s available, and I’ve had mixed success so far. More on that in the other posts, and the reference pages 🙂
West End Access 