What can meeting professionals learn from a scrappy off-Broadway theater known for the longest-running crime play and a focus on sharing experiences with an international audience? It turns out, a lot.
The Theater Center in Times Square, the only off-Broadway venue with an entrance on Broadway (the category refers to the size of a theater and not the geographic location), also holds the Guinness World Records entry for most performances as the same character in the play “Perfect Crime,” which Catherine Russell has been starring in for 38 years, eight shows a week. She is also general manager of the 398-seat, two-stage venue and a passionate trailblazer.
A Theater of Firsts
The Theater Center was the first to resume live performances after the pandemic and recently started offering parking reservations using the app SpotHero.
The theater also pioneered generative AI translation as a tool for bringing people together. Director of Marketing Jeffrey Schmelkin shared lessons learned from implementing Wordly AI translation technology at all performances and why the same accessibility benefits could apply to corporate events.
“It’s not that we sit around thinking, ‘What can we do first?,” Schmelkin explained. “We just think about the needs of the community and happen to be the first ones to fill it because we are so small and nimble.”
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Post-Covid, theater marketers, like event marketers, are reacting to behavior shifts that include more last-minute ticket purchases. “We are competing with their couch and the comfort of staying home,” he said. Being able to offer live translation is one way to attract audiences that have become accustomed to subtitles on streaming programming.
“Translation is such an effective way to expand your audience,” said Russell, who is enthusiastic about regional theaters, and eventually Broadway, adopting the practice. It is already being implemented at churches and government meetings where accessibility and inclusion are paramount concerns.
Why Live Matters
Schmelkin explained that some theaters record scripted translations for playback during future performances, but by raising the curtain on real-time translation, The Theater Center doubled down on the reason live performances—like live events—are magical. “The whole idea of theater is that you will see a different show every time you go. AI translation picks up those differences in ways a pre-recorded tape won’t.”
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The Theater Center partnered with the event technology company Wordly to offer captions in more than 60 languages via a smartphone web page (no app required) or through earbuds (disposable ones are available if a patron didn’t bring theirs). According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2021 American Community Survey, nearly 25% of the U.S. population (67.8 million people) speak languages other than English. Spanish is the most common non-English language, followed by Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Arabic and French.
An Affordable Event Tech
Translation features are complimentary to the ticketholder at The Theater Center. The price to enable the service is almost half the price of hiring an interpreter, requires no special equipment and is much less distracting to the rest of the audience. The service also meets enterprise-level security standards.
“We think everyone should have the opportunity to experience the performing arts,” Schmelkin said. The service is particularly popular with international tourists, multilingual families and the hearing impaired. Each patron can experience the same show at the same time in their preferred language at a comfortable volume in their medium of choice—reading or listening.
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“It really changes the experience of sitting in the theater for international travelers who might have trouble following a musical entirely in English,” said Russell.
Translation Logistics
The Theater Center has been offering translation service for two years and has learned a few things through testing microphone locations and types along with language translation activation.
Ticketholders who would like to participate make a request for a specific language to the house manager as little as five minutes before the show starts, then they scan a code to access it through their phone, plug in their earbuds and start enjoying. An app is available but not necessary. To eliminate any disturbance, those accessing the service are encouraged to sit in a designated area.
For even more accuracy, glossaries can be customized with specific terminology, names or technical jargon, depending on the audience and application.
