New at Festival Circolo: The stage is at least as exciting when you can only hear it.

During the Tilburg Circus festival Circolo you can experience it, if you want to, and especially if you can't help it: audio description. Especially for the blind and visually impaired, the festival offers the services of Come and see, a company that specialises in describing live what is on stage in front of you. Founder Arlette Hanson, was pretty much born into the circus as the scion of a circus family. She rolled into this world when she had to say 'no' to a class of visually impaired children who wanted to visit her Winter Circus. A year later, she did arrange something for them, and now it has become a business. Listen to her story in this podcast.

Among other things, she talks about the do's and don'ts of the profession, about how you can or cannot show emotions and how important live sound is. And about how you shouldn't make it too funny, because people with audio description will then start laughing at times when they shouldn't.

Audio-description, by the way, is not only for blind and visually impaired fans. Those who, for example during the special performance 'l Ane et la Carotte by Lucho Smit during Circolo, want to experience it once, can just request it.

More on that particular performance, where the whole essence of circus is turned on its head, later.