A theater in Walla Walla now has wearable devices to help deaf audience members feel live music through their bodies.
The Gesa Power House Theatre’s new haptic vests fit like a daypack, with a front clip and adjustable straps, and vibrate with the music’s rhythm and intensity. Every beat and thump radiates through the wearer’s frame. It’s like having a subwoofer on your back.
“They’re very comfortable, actually, to sit and wear, because they were made for video gamers,” said Becky Hatley, the theater’s artistic director.
The two vests on offer are for live music shows only, not for movies or spoken-word shows, such as plays and presentations. People can reserve them through the box office on a first-come, first-served basis.
As far as Hatley knows, the Gesa is the only theater in the Pacific Northwest that offers haptic vests.
She attends a monthly meeting of artistic directors and booking agents from around the region. When she recently told them about the vests, she discovered that most of her cohort had never heard of them.
“This is a very unusual accommodation,” Hatley said. “This is not one that other venues have breached into yet.”
Why haptic vests?
A few years ago, Hatley learned that the band Coldplay provides haptic vests during their performances. As someone who had a deaf cousin, Hatley said she knows what tactile engagement means to someone in a silent world.
“He always played with the loudest vibrating toy, so I understood how these vests would be very useful for accessibility,” she said.
It took the theater’s accessibility committee about three years to gather grant funding and — what turned out to be the biggest challenge — find the devices.
“You can’t just walk into a store and buy one; you have to wait till a batch is being produced and then purchase from that batch,” she said.
The theater ordered them through SUBPAC, the Palo Alto-based company that provides the haptic vests Coldplay uses. Each vest cost about $1,200, which includes both the vest and wireless technology.
The theater first made the vests available at the theater’s Artrageous show in early March. Since then, they’ve been used about four times. One weekend, Hatley said, two people who checked them out didn’t have hearing difficulties; they just wanted to enhance their concert experience.
The vests are part of the theater’s push to make its offerings more accessible. The theater also has assistive listening devices, and it provides American Sign Language interpretation and Spanish translation.
“We want everyone in Walla Walla to feel included. … Accessibility is everything around here,” she said. “We want the community to be part of our world.”
