All-Access Ticket?

Brent Crabb recently discovered one small advantage of seeing “The Lion King” from a wheelchair.

Before the show started at Hollywood’s Pantages Theatre, as he was shown to the wheelchair seating area, he was ushered through an aisle not visible from the main theater--and he got a sneak preview of the elaborate costumes that would soon be worn in the show’s opening procession.

Likewise, wheelchair user John Pixley received a dash of extra service when he was shown to his seating area at Troubadour Theater’s “A Midsummer Saturday Night’s Fever Dream,” at the Miles Playhouse in Santa Monica last summer. “An actor very kindly, almost gallantly, almost in character, showed me up the elevator and through the backstage passage,” Pixley said.

In some cases, the services now available for theatergoers in wheelchairs--or those with other distinctive physical needs--go far beyond pre-show pleasantries. Throughout Southern California, theater companies are taking actions to make their offerings more accessible to patrons with special needs.

The Mark Taper Forum recently presented “The Body of Bourne,” a play about a man who lived with severe physical deformities, written by a disabled playwright. The cast featured two actors in wheelchairs. The Taper itself, in downtown L.A., was renovated earlier this year to provide more accommodations for audience members who can’t walk, as well as for disabled actors.

Deaf West Theatre in North Hollywood presents shows in which deaf actors play many of the leads, moving sign language from the side to center stage--while speaking actors voice the lines for hearing patrons. The company moved into a new theater last year, spending $20,000 on lights that focus especially on the signing actors and $12,000 on a customized sound system with sub-woofers under the seats--so that deaf theatergoers can feel the vibrations of music.

Last month, the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa introduced a new device for assisting theatergoers who are hard of hearing. At one performance of the stage version of “Saturday Night Fever,” every word spoken or sung onstage also appeared on a small digital screen visible from a designated area of 40 seats near the left front of the orchestra section.

The final dress rehearsal of every production in the Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities series in Redondo Beach is reserved for disabled audiences, free of charge. Because few able-bodied patrons are there on these nights, the theater can accommodate more wheelchairs than usual.

Audio-described performances for blind theatergoers are offered by Center Theatre Group, which operates the Taper and the Ahmanson Theatre, and Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre Company. At one performance of each production, headset-wearing theatergoers can hear descriptions of what happens in between the spoken lines.

Many of these features were spurred by changes in disability law in the last 30 years. For any theater that receives federal funding, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibits discrimination on the basis of a disability. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 extended such prohibitions to any form of public accommodations, although existing facilities were required only to make “readily achievable” changes to promote accessibility. Wayne Cook, ADA coordinator for the grant-giving California Arts Council, said he has received only a couple of complaints about theater accessibility during his four years on the job.

Nevertheless, “accessibility in smaller venues remains a challenge,” said Olivia Raynor, director of the National Arts and Disability Center at UCLA. And even at larger venues, “the disabled audience has not been as included as other community members from other diverse groups. It’s an untapped market and an untapped audience in many ways.”

It’s also an audience, Raynor noted, that’s bound to get larger as the baby boomers swell the ranks of the senior population and encounter the disabilities that often accompany old age. Increasing accessibility of theaters, said Raynor, “isn’t only about satisfying a niche audience. It’s about expanding the audience in general.”

Although most large theaters can accommodate audience members who arrive in wheelchairs, chair-using theatergoers cite three main areas in which their experiences could be improved: seat location, restroom accessibility, and transportation to and from the theaters.

Wheelchair seating is seldom in the center of the theater. It’s usually at the back or on the sides of the hall--sometimes at a price that’s no lower than more centralized seats. The assigned side seating is often in the front corners of halls.

“I don’t think I’ve been in a theater where you’ve had much of a choice of where to sit,” said Norma Vescoso, 65, who sometimes uses a wheelchair and works as executive director of the Independent Living Center of Southern California in Van Nuys.

The smaller the theater, the less pronounced this problem is likely to be--simply because the sight lines in smaller theaters are usually better. Crabb, 53, of Fountain Valley doesn’t mind that his season tickets at South Coast Repertory’s 507-seat main stage in Costa Mesa are in the back row.

At the 2,994-seat Segerstrom Hall of the Orange County Performing Arts Center, next door to South Coast, Crabb tries to sit in the small wheelchair area in the front left corner of the orchestra section, as opposed to the wheelchair area in the back row, where “you’ve got to bring your binoculars,” he said.

On the other hand, when wheelchair-user Dale Goodman, 58, of Fullerton attends performances at the performing arts center, she prefers the back row. “Nobody’s tripping over me, I don’t block anyone’s view, and I don’t have to look up anyone’s nostrils,” she explained. Furthermore, she said that sitting in the front corner of the hall can make it hard to see the action on the other side or the back of the stage. When she sits in that position, she said, “frequently the rest of the audience is laughing or clapping, and I’m wondering what’s going on.”

Crabb, an engineer and plant manager for a thermal plastics company, said he understands the reason for the limited choices--”it’s related to the engineering that would allow the person behind me to see around my chair.” But with the off-center arrangement of the Segerstrom seating, in which some of the rows end in the center of the auditorium, he doesn’t understand why there aren’t a few chair-accessible seats closer to the center.

Larry Stotz, the performing arts center’s accessibility coordinator, said that steps must be negotiated to get to most of the seats Crabb has in mind, but he pledged to see whether anything could be done about it.

In some theaters, patrons who are able to leave their wheelchairs can transfer to a more centralized aisle seat--or a seat in which the side armrest can be lowered to allow easier access. But Crabb said he dislikes attempting this maneuver because he feels as if he’s “part of the performance.” The best opportunity to obtain a more centralized viewpoint is in theaters in which the wheelchair seating area is in a wide aisle that crosses the center of the hall, such as the Taper or Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center.

For reasons of economy, some theatergoers want to sacrifice better views for cheaper seats. But these seats are often upstairs, where wheelchairs can’t go without elevators--and many pre-’90s theaters, like the Pantages Theatre and the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood, lack elevators. Managers of the Geffen and Pantages will provide downstairs wheelchair-accessible seating--if available--for the upstairs price to any wheelchair-using patron who requests it.

Asked if that policy would extend to theatergoers who aren’t wheelchair users but nevertheless can’t climb steps, a Pantages spokesman said that the theater would try to oblige.

Smaller theaters are often older and less endowed--and therefore less likely to have sufficient funds to make improvements that enhance accessibility. Because of their size, however, almost any seat offers a good view. Pixley, 40, said that he is “quite impressed and touched” by how the small theater staffs “go out of their way to accommodate me, even when it looks like there’s no room.” He cited “an ingenious, elaborate set of temporary ramps” that Cornerstone Theater Company erected at the Community Service Organization building in Boyle Heights, a site that lacked an elevator.

On the other hand, when he saw a play at Long Beach Playhouse’s upstairs Studio Theatre, “there was no elevator and my attendant had to carry me up and down the stairs.”

At Burbank’s Third Stage, where Pixley recently saw “Big Bear,” “there was a high step up to the front door, two steps up into the house and two steps down to where I sat in my wheelchair,” he said. “I wasn’t told this when I called for reservations. Fortunately, because my van is out of commission, I just happened to be in my light manual chair instead of my very heavy motorized chair. Also, the usher-prop guy helped out.”

The Taper received considerable credit for its recent expansion of centralized wheelchair seating and its transformation of the backstage area into a wheelchair-accessible space. However, the Taper isn’t yet ideal for wheelchair users, said frequent Taper theatergoer Bob Harris, 74. His issue: the restroom location.

At the Taper, a lift takes patrons in wheelchairs--one at a time--from the lobby to a point on the middle level of the seating. However, the restrooms are on the ground floor. During intermissions, wheelchair users must descend on the lift back to the main floor and then maneuver through the cramped lobby area to get to the restrooms. The men’s room is farther from the lift than the women’s room and includes only one accessible stall, usually accompanied by a long queue. “It’s pretty impractical to get to the restroom,” Harris concluded.

Other accessible restrooms are located on the plaza outside the Taper, so a wheelchair user could exit through a side door and avoid the lobby crowds, Taper spokeswoman Nancy Hereford said.

The Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills is the worst of the larger venues, Harris said. Its restrooms are on the second floor, and there is no elevator. Canon spokeswoman Patty Onagan said that anyone who requests wheelchair seating is advised of the restroom restrictions when making reservations.

The Coronet Theatre in Los Angeles isn’t much better, Harris said, because the men’s room is too small for access by a wheelchair. However, the theater’s executive director, Ted Rawlins, said that on occasion, wheelchair-using men have arranged to use the larger women’s room.

For some wheelchair users, the biggest issues they face don’t involve the theaters, but rather the transportation to and from the theaters.

Goodman relies on vans from Orange County Transportation Authority. But they don’t always show up on time, she said. Until recently, they wouldn’t operate after 10 p.m., so she had to leave many performances early; on June 1, however, closing time was extended by an hour. Goodman also wishes the vans could go to theaters across the Los Angeles County line. “There seems to be a cement and barbed wire fence separating the counties,” she said. (Actually, it is possible to arrange a transfer to vans operated within Los Angeles County by Metropolitan Transit Authority, but there are only three locations where the transfers can take place.)

Pixley especially likes to attend plays in the many sub-100-seat venues, “because they’re cheaper and doing more interesting work,” he said. But very few of them are near his home in Claremont. He travels by rail to shows that are within a few blocks of Metrolink or Red Line stops. Still, he often has to arrange for someone to pick him up after the show, because the train schedules don’t always run late enough to get him back home.

For the rest of the county’s theaters, Pixley often goes in his van, driven by his regular attendant, whose salary is paid by state funds. Pixley buys an extra ticket so his companion-chauffeur can also see the show.

Katie Weiss, a 33-year-old medical transcriber from Santa Monica who has been blind since birth, has also relied on a companion during her trips to the Mark Taper Forum. Until recently, Weiss’ mother, her usual escort, whispered impromptu descriptions of parts of the play that weren’t audible, staying “so close to my ear that nobody around us could say ‘shh,’ ” Weiss said.

But now when they go to the Taper, Weiss’ mother can relax. They’ve started attending the one performance of each production in which a live, professional audio description, written in advance and transmitted via a headset, is furnished by the Taper.

Their first experience with the system was on April 21, with “QED,” a play that was virtually a solo performance by Alan Alda, playing physicist Richard Feynman. Weiss said she understood what was going on “100% more than she would have” without the audio description system. “They really do a great job of not talking when the actors are talking.”

Many deaf theatergoers are exponents of American Sign Language and relish the opportunity to see signing actors, in the thick of the action, at Deaf West. The company also has earned respect from the larger theatrical community: At last year’s peer-judged Ovation Awards, Deaf West won both of the production awards in the smaller theater categories--including one for a musical, “Oliver!”

Sharon Ann Dror of Santa Monica, president of the Jewish Deaf Community Center, has seen almost every Deaf West production--and one of her children, also deaf, appeared in the title role of “Oliver!”

Deaf since birth, the 40-year-old Dror also enjoys signed performances at other theaters, but not nearly as much. The limited schedule--usually one performance per production--can be problematic, she said, especially because she has to coordinate baby-sitters for her three children. And “it would be nice to have the interpreters on the stage instead of the floor, so we don’t have to take our eyes away from the action and look back and forth,” she said.

By contrast, Charlotte Schamadan, 52, of Monrovia has partial hearing loss and has never mastered sign language, instead relying on hearing aids, headsets and lip reading. Because of the lip reading, she sits as close to the stage as she can in theaters. “The farther back I am, it becomes a visual instead of an aural experience,” she said. She sat in the front of the balcony at “The Lion King,” and she could follow most of the story without the dialogue, she said. “That becomes my measure of a good theater experience.” Because of her lip reading, she avoids shows in which the characters speak with thick accents. The Pasadena Playhouse and Canon Theatre staffs are helpful in arranging close seating, she said.

Like the infrared headset systems that most large theaters now provide, the new captioned system that the Orange County Performing Arts Center introduced last month is designed more for the hard of hearing, like Schamadan, than for the deaf who know sign language, said the center’s Stotz. However, the center also provides one signed performance for each of the musicals and children’s shows at Segerstrom Hall.

“I’d like to think we would offer these performances before people even ask for them,” Stotz said. He’ll be investigating audio description systems later this year. “There’s a lot more we could be doing,” he added. “People in our community have different needs. A lot of these people will visit us only if they feel they can enjoy what’s on our stage as fully as possible.”