Prepared Theatre Captions or Live Speech Captions? Start with the Audience Promise

Text on a Screen Is Not One Kind of Audience Service

The labels sound close, but they can describe different responsibilities. Prepared theatre captions or surtitles follow an authorised text through rehearsal changes, translation or access review, delivery, and live recovery. Speech-to-text captioning responds to spoken language as it happens. Neither service is automatically more accessible, accurate, or ethical simply because of the tool used.

When a Prepared Theatre Service Is the Right Question

• The text is scripted, approved, translated, or written for access rather than generated from open speech.
• Rehearsal cuts, rights, names, language versions, and editorial decisions must be traceable and reviewed by qualified people.
• The production must explain who can read what, where, in which language, and with what support—without overpromising access.
• The operator needs rehearsed ways to recover after a missed advance, changed performance, or unavailable display.
• Preparation, review, front-of-house guidance, operation, and recovery have named, paid ownership rather than invisible extra work.

When Live Speech Captioning Is a Different, Valid Service

• The event centres on unscripted speech, questions, discussion, or presentation rather than a prepared dramatic text.
• The team has considered the accuracy, delay, vocabulary, speaker identification, privacy, and correction expectations of that service.
• People who use captions know what is offered and can obtain ordinary support without disclosing a diagnosis or language need.
• The service has appropriate human expertise and a recovery plan; automation is not presented as a substitute for access provision.
• Where audiences need both prepared text and live speech captions, the content, review, delivery, and support responsibilities are explicitly separated.

Do Not Let a Product Category Decide the Promise

Ask people affected by the service and relevant specialists what is usable in the actual venue. Explain how feedback will be used, obtain informed consent, keep participation voluntary, collect only necessary information, and fairly compensate requested time and expertise. Do not require a diagnosis, proof of disability, language need, or unpaid labour in return for ordinary support. Test the advertised route with the real audience information, staffing, and likely failures; narrow the promise when it cannot be sustained.

Compare the Service Before the Category

SurtitleLive supports a prepared-text theatre workflow: review the script, choose the audience display, and advance approved lines live. It does not turn open speech into captions.

Pockitle is the separate workflow for unscripted speech. It listens to one spoken source language and produces original-language captions plus up to three translated caption streams. Start with live captioning for theatre to decide whether that workflow fits the event.

Neither product supplies caption writers, translators, accessibility specialists, venue connectivity, audience devices, or live operators, and neither certifies accessibility or legal compliance. If the main issue is terminology, continue with Theatre Captions vs. Surtitles. If the issue is broader planning, continue with How to Evaluate Theatre Captioning Software, then plan Subtitle Backup and Fallback for Live Performance.