New to theatre or haven’t been in a while? See photos and helpful tips in our
Westbury Theatre Social Story

Getting to the Westbury and About the Space

The Westbury Theatre at Fringe Theatre is barrier-free. This means no stairs anywhere in the building, wide hallways and doors, bathroom access for people who use mobility aids.

Fringe Theatre is also centrally located and available via major Whyte Ave bus routes and bike paths. 

To plan your trip out, we recommend google maps!

Accessible parking is located by the Edmonton Public Library – Strathcona Branch

General Accessibility Measures for Every Ayita Performance:

Ayita by Teneil Whiskeyjack contains loud sounds, high contrast lighting, and possible use of a strobe light and a haze machine. 

Sensory kits are available for rent at the box office. They contain sunglasses and headphones to lessen the effects of the high contrast effects. Just ask the Box Office staff, they get you a kit and then return it once complete. Sensory Kits are provided courtesy of The Arden Theatre.

While we encourage people to sink into the performance, we recognize that things happen that pull us away. Ayita patrons who think they might need to get up to go to the bathroom, to go to the lobby to cough, or take a phone call can sit in our specific seating. Please ask an usher or Front of House staff member for more information. 

In being barrier-free, Ayita is allowing wheelchair using patrons to sit not only in the designated spots. If you use a wheelchair or mobility aid and wish to sit with your friends on the ground level instead of the designated area, please ask the Front of House staff to help make that happen! Also, ushers won’t be taking mobility aids but can arrange your seating to have it near you. 

The Fringe Theatre has a hearing-loop system. Most hearing aids have this function, but it may need to be turned on by an audiologist when having a hearing aid fitted or adjusted. The hearing loop allows theatre goers who use hearing aids to turn down the ambient noise to focus on the theatre. Fringe also has hearing loop headphones for people to use if they don’t have a hearing aid or the function built in. 

More about the hearing loop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X57F_seby3s 

Accessibility Performances

    • Captioning provided: March 5, 8, 11, 13 
    • Public Relaxed performances: March 11 
    • Pay What You Can Full performance March 8 
    • Percentage of house is always PWYC

How Captioning Works

Captioning is being provided by CART captioner Shannon Wiebe. If you wish to use the caption, we will connect directly to your smart phone. We encourage you to bring your own tablet if you need it bigger! 

To use the captions, you will need to use your web browser to connect to the captioning website by clicking here.

You will then be able to see the captions in live time. We ask that you turn down the brightness of your screens and sit in our captioned section to not disrupt other patrons.

How Relaxed Performances Works

When the traditional etiquette of a theatre is softened it’s called a relaxed performance. The reason for this is for people that might not be able to sit quietly in the dark for long periods of time or have atypical sensory processing (parents with young children, the Neurodivergent community are some examples). Relaxed performances typically have or allow:

  • Audience members can leave and come back into the theatre as needed
  • Dimmed lighting and dampened sound
  • Some light near the doorways for people to move around safely
  • Sensory kits with headphones and darkened to help neurodiverse audience members 
  • Quiet focusing devices like fidget spinners is encouraged 

This allows audience members to move as needed, to fidget (or quietly stim), use the washroom and still enjoy the performance.

Pay What You Can (PWYC) Protocol 

We consider PWYC an accessibility measure, as it allows people who don’t have the budget for theatre to attend.

10 tickets for every performance is Pay What You Can with March 8th entirely dedicated to Pay What You Can. Pay What You Can tickets are available online or in person, as a first come, first serve basis. Complimentary tickets are available for Indigenous patrons. More info on that here.

Film Accessibility

The filmed performance allows us to enact even greater accessibility measures! The film version of Ayita will be Deaf Interpreted by Crystal Wolf, closed captions and visual descriptions will be provided as well. Stay tuned for the link that will be available after SkirtsAfire and the live performances of Ayita are done.