Now you're talking.

 We used to do things.  Go to concerts, plays, movies.  Slowly, though, we stopped doing it because I couldn't hear anything.  I last saw a play in 1999 (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the Guthrie, excellent production with Patrick Stewart and Mercedes Ruehl, at least as far as I could tell, having missed at least half the dialogue), and have, in the period since 1999 seen two movies in theaters - The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers in 2002 (which I didn't need to hear to know what was going on having read the books several times) and then Gravity in 2013, which actually didn't rely on its dialogue either, you could watch the picture and not hear it and follow the story (presuming you'd left your logic and anything you knew about science at the door).

But that's it.  For the last 25 years almost all of our entertainment took place at home, where I could turn on the captions.

Now I can hear much better, with my CIs, but we've never tried a live performance.  But the other day my husband said, why don't we go see a play?  Don't you want to find out if you can hear well enough?  And I thought about it for all of about a minute and half and said, yeah, sure, let's do it.

So we did.  The national tour of Aaron Sorkin's production of To Kill A Mockingbird is playing in Minneapolis this week, at the historic Orpheum Theater, which is of itself worth a drive into the city.  It has Richard Thomas as Atticus Finch, and honestly, I'd watch anything written by Aaron Sorkin.  Like, I'd watch Richard Thomas read Aaron Sorkin's grocery list.

But this is his adaptation of a book that's an important part of the American canon, and is resonating today more than ever.

So we ponied up more money than I really want to think about it (first the actual cost of the tickets and THEN Ticketmaster gets their pound of flesh) and got tickets to a matinee this afternoon.  The theater's website mentioned that there were hearing assistive devices available (but with no description to know what they were) and it also said that you could download an app and see captions on your phone.

I downloaded the app and was all ready; we arrived at the Orpheum a bit early so I started trying to connect to the network (the app has its own wifi in the theaters that use it) but though I could connect I couldn't get internet, and when I tried to use the app it said OH NO, you have no internet and that, it appears, was that.

But I asked the usher about the assistive devices and they brought it and it was a neckloop!  The theater is looped!  It was WONDERFUL.  My processors have three options for sound input:  100% microphone, 50/50 microphone and telecoil (that is, the loop) and 100% telecoil.  This means that when I chose T for telecoil I could hear the actors - and ONLY the actors.  No coughing, talking, sneezing or whatever from the audience.  It was incredible.  I missed maybe a word here and there but I heard almost everything.  I don't even know if hearing people hear everything.

And yes.  It was excellent.  It was Aaron Sorkin, and Richard Thomas does indeed have the both the gravitas and the humor to do justice to Atticus Finch, and the woman who played Calpurnia was wonderful, as were, well, pretty much the whole cast.  

This was awesome.