“All the World’s a Stage”: Meet Rachel
Sacramento native Rachel Freidberg was studying theatre arts with a minor in Shakespeare studies at Southern Oregon University when she almost fell down a flight of stairs in 2021 at age 21.
Born with congenital glaucoma, Rachel had always been able to get by with what she called “DIY solutions” to vision loss. But that day on the stairs, it felt like her theatre dreams fell with her. Now the 25-year-old is living in Ashland, Oregon, as a proud Caption Operator for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s current season.
Growing up in Land Park, Rachel had normal vision with corrections until 2nd grade, but she could always get by until her junior year of college. Her near-miss with the flight of stairs was a wake-up call. She called her ophthalmologist who was perplexed because the pressure in her eyes had been stable for the past two years.
“My doctor wasn’t able to come up with a reason, so my parents just started Googling what the heck you do when you can’t see,” Rachel said. “Fortunately, they found Society for the Blind.”
Staff at Society for the Blind connected her to the Department of Rehabilitation and our Low Vision Clinic. That’s when she learned she was legally blind.
“It was kind of a weird feeling,” Rachel said. “Nothing had really changed for me visually because it had all been a slow decline, but it was still kind of odd to wrap my head around being legally blind.”
Society for the Blind set her up with magnifiers and other tools, and she joined our Core program, taking assistive technology classes and orientation and mobility training. She now credits Society for the Blind with helping her graduate from college.
“If I hadn’t gone to Society when I did, I don’t even know if I would have finished college on time, much less gotten a job,” she said. “I very much feel like I gained a support system there. People used to ask me what I need, and my answer was always ‘I don’t know.’ Now I know I can ask for large print, digital magnifiers, screen readers and more.”
When Rachel graduated from college, she came back to Sacramento and was working retail while looking for other employment. She would periodically check the Oregon Shakespeare Festival job postings as a “what if,” she said, but never expected to find anything and certainly never thought she would be hired for a seasonal position since she was out of state. In June 2025, she applied for a Caption Operator position at the festival on a whim, figuring the worst that could happen is they would say no. Instead, they called her for an interview and offered her the position that day.
“My family was very excited for me. They know that working for this company is a dream come true,” Rachel said. “Everyone at Society was super happy for me, too. The first people I told were my instructors, and immediately one asked to send an email to the entire staff.”
Rachel had 10 days to find a place to live and move back to Ashland. Fortunately, she still knew people in the area from college, and she has been working there since mid-June.
“I spent the first two weeks kind of in shock that I was working for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival,” she said. “It’s a dream place to work.”
In addition to loving that Ashland is such a walkable town, Rachel has been impressed with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s accessibility offerings, both to patrons and to staff. Many staff do not have a car, so the festival offers a shuttle so that staff do not have to walk home late at night. Her supervisor even asked if she wanted onboarding information in large print before she had a chance to ask.
Rachel also said the festival offers on-demand captioning services at every performance of every production, which is unusual for theatre. Because it is live theatre, captions cannot be run automatically so her job is to track the captions with the timing of the action on stage, allowing for ad libs and more. The festival offers assistive listening devices and large print playbills. Their team of three audio describers and five captioners allow patrons to request closed captioning, as well as live audio description if requested two weeks in advance, for any performance.
“It’s really, really special,” Rachel said. “I’m proud of the work we do and the services we’re able to offer. Being back in theatre has reminded me why I love it so much.”
Rachel said in her junior and senior years of college, she was focused on the practical aspects of managing her vision loss but also saw a therapist through our Hope Counseling partnership to deal with the mental and emotional aspects. After graduating, she had the space to realize the full scope of the emotional impact of her journey through vision loss.
“There are areas where I’m still dealing with that, and unfortunately a lot of that is surrounding the idea of performing,” Rachel said. “I’ve been trying to figure out if there are ways I can still perform, even though I can’t do it the way that I grew up doing it.”
Her current contract with the festival runs through Oct. 31, with a potential renewal for next season, beginning in February 2026. As Rachel begins to consider performing again, she is grateful to the many doctors who helped her along the way, but she wishes more knew where to connect people after a diagnosis of vision loss.
“I feel like so many people are told there’s nothing to be done to improve your vision, so good luck,” Rachel said. “But we have Society right here, and they’ve given me back so much of my quality of life. All my ophthalmologists have been fantastic on the treatment front, but I feel like this needs to be part of the conversation too.”