The Soul of Specificity: Describing the Stage

As I came off the elevator, I saw my grandmother, Gay Maurice, sitting in the common area of her residence hall at Sunnyside, a retirement community on the east side of Harrisonburg. She had been admitted just a few weeks before, in late August 2024. 

Unable to live independently due to her rapidly declining eyesight, she moved in with us so that we could provide the support she needed. Unfortunately, her blindness robbed her of one of her greatest joys—reading—and also of her stability. After a bad fall left her with a brain hemorrhage, she needed more care than we could provide at home.

A man in his early 40s was sitting beside her, talking quietly. I approached, conscious of the fact that, though she was now completely blind, her senses were still sharp. Would she sense I was there? I said hello and gently took her hand. The man told me he was a chaplain and expressed how he had just been introducing himself. I sensed that Grandma, though alert, was perhaps a little disoriented by this new visitor. I cheerfully greeted him, then began describing him to her— “Grandma, this young gentleman is wearing a blue plaid shirt, wide black-rimmed glasses, and has sandy blonde hair, and he’s got a very friendly smile!” She laughed, which brought out her still warm, humorous nature despite the looming reality: she was receiving hospice care, and these were our final weeks together. 

The simple act of describing the chaplain’s appearance helped ease and orient my grandmother during one of the most stressful transitions of her life. Providing even those few moments of understanding and connection is something I treasure as one of my last meaningful gifts to her. 

Choosing to insert a brief physical description for my grandmother wasn’t an accident. In the weeks prior to this visit with the chaplain, I’d been keeping her updated on my latest undertaking: training to be an Audio Describer. My good friend Aili wanted to increase accessibility for blind and low vision (BLV) audience members at her outdoor theatre, Silk Moth Stage. The grant-funded training would help me better understand how to write and perform audio descriptions of the stage action during the live performances. 

The training, provided by the Audio Description Institute, focused on professional standards of audio description for commercials and films. Course attendees were taught how to deliver objective and concise descriptions of visual moments in order to make them accessible for BLV audiences. For example, if a commercial features a golden retriever puppy running from an old barn into a field, an audio description may read, “A barn door opens. A puppy runs into a field.” A voice actor would read these two brief sentences very quickly to fit the description between prerecorded dialogue and voiceovers.

In practice, audio describing a live performance is a different beast—it means attending several rehearsals during tech week to carefully observe and record specific actions that would otherwise be inaccessible to a BLV audience member. Unlike traditional audio description, describing for the theatre requires real-time tracking of blocking, actors’ expressions and physicality, and key moments of silence, all without being able to hit “pause” to review what just happened onstage. Simultaneously, the describer makes decisions about the specific adjectives, verbs, and adverbs which best capture the performer’s and director’s choices. Delivery of the final “track” happens live over a radio or web-based audio feed, which patrons access through earbuds or dedicated headsets. 

After the training, I prepared to describe Silk Moth’s production of The Last Wide Open by Audrey Cefaly. In the next season, I created an audio description for The Wanting Forest by Monica Flory. During both, I observed rehearsals from the grassy lawn, computer on my lap, and bug spray close at hand.

Silk Moth’s outdoor conventions eschew traditional trappings such as stagelights and microphones. I interpreted the stage action amid the hum of grasshoppers and frogs, the glow of sunset, and the rustle of cows just over the pasture fence. I returned for at least 3 more rehearsals, watching, interpreting, and capturing descriptions as actors worked through their final dress rehearsals.

Most descriptions are minimalist, focusing on stage movement, or physical actions. The following descriptions are from my AD track of The Wanting Forest:

They stand in a line, hip to hip, and bounce at the knees.

She perches on the bottom edge of a plank.

She recoils.

They hug.

Journey Pages circle her while she walks in place.

Sometimes the descriptions convey design information, such as costumes, which can later become signifiers:

A witch in a black sequin cape approaches.

Some describe specific production conventions:

The moon, a white paper lantern, hovers above them.

The silk flutters to the ground.

Others are metatheatrical, heightening our awareness that we’re in a field watching a play:

They flow through the grass before the stage.

They float over the grassy ocean.

Specific directions punctuate scenes when action continues after the final lines are spoken:

The friends form a warm tableau of home and company.

Descriptions also help audiences toggle between the meta and the story, such as when multiple actors portray a single character by sharing a costume:

Another actor takes Aspen’s dress.

Another Aspen sits before her.

Rereading the script of The Wanting Forest, I see how I was drawing on my experiences as an actor, director, audience member, and teacher when crafting the description track. From my early career at the American Shakespeare Center, watching hundreds of hours of rehearsals and productions, to directing youth productions and now writing my own plays, I’ve gained 25 years of experience translating text to movement: audio describing is just another way of translanguaging, something I practice daily in my ESL classroom (more on this in a future post!)

Specific verb choices help convey both action as well as intent. This is where my personal description approach may deviate from convention. Describers are trained to narrate actions with a neutral and objective voice, void of emotional subjectivity. Often, this results in a description can feel flat and, sometimes, overly simplistic. However, in theatre, specificity is the soul of storytelling:

A witch wrests the silk from her.

They waft the silks around sleeping Mira.

The Journey Pages recede.

Choosing a heightened vocabulary word like “wrests” serves multiple purposes for the audience: first, it paints a more accurate picture of the action than a simple verb like “pulls”. It does more heavy lifting by layering both the action of pulling and the struggle of obtaining the object from the other character. Of course, more simple verbs, like pull, offer unambiguous meaning, especially for mixed-age audiences.

While Grandma never got the opportunity to hear these descriptions, I know that she would have absolutely loved Silk Moth’s productions. Enjoying professional theatre while nestled in a serene, pastoral glen brings out the best of both players and audience: whether watching, listening, or both, nature offers everything we need to gather in community—our imaginations supply the rest.