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Digitizing Performance History Where do we gofrom here?Christie CarsonPublished online: 06 Aug 2014.

To cite this article: Christie Carson (2005) Digitizing Performance History Where do we go from here?, PerformanceResearch: A Journal of the Performing Arts, 10:3, 4-17, DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2005.10871434

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Digitizing Performance History Where do we go from here?

CHRISTIE CARSON

Digital Technology has made it possible to document the movements of every actor in each rehearsal and performance of every production of Shakespeare created for the stage (the street, the church hall or the school auditorium, for that matter). But the question arises does the fact that it is possible make it a desirable thing to do? The wide availability of digital technology, combined with the end of the millennium, resulted in an explosion of activity around the question of archiving. At the dawn of the new millennium the desire to archive everything for posterity was very strong. Thankfully that seeming urgency has calmed down considerably in the ensuing years, largely because of the financial and technical hurdles involved in archiving. In fact, looking back five years with a cool eye, it is possible to see how the rush towards the digital was above all a struggle for the power of distribution. The attention of a worldwide audience offered up by the World Wide Web became the aim of every newcomer to this technology, whether a commercial company, a publicly funded institution or an individual enthusiast. The naivety and optimism with which so many of us approached this new technology is touching in retrospect. The reality, of course, was much more mundane and also a little uglier as traditional power relations and prejudices have slowly been reconfirmed in this new environment.

This essay will look at the issues at stake in the digital world of archiving performance. The

case of Shakespeare presents a particularly extreme example of the power dynamics of this world but as a special case can serve to articulate, in no uncertain terms, what is at stake. The position of Shakespeare within education in the United Kingdom in particular, while a long and well-fought battle, has taken on new dimensions and new champions in the digital world. At one end of the spectrum the current government has seen the history of Shakespeare in performance as a means of fulfilling its mandate to bring history and culture into every classroom in the land. At the other end of the spectrum increasingly large commercial publishers are creating increasingly large and monolithic subscriptions services that are trying to provide a new kind of intellectual authority. Between these two extremes there exists a complex range of individual producers of online materials with a wide range of motiva· tiona! and methodological positions. The underlying cultural assumptions of the positions I describe are glaring, yet few have drawn attention to these aspects of digital archiving. By taking a closer look at who is currently involved in the digital performance archiving world, I hope to draw some light towards the issues of power and authority. As a means of establishing a path for the cultural future of the country the Labour government seem to have chosen to focus on perpetuating particular visions of the country's cultural past. This is not a new political strategy, but I suggest that it is one that has taken on new dimensions

Performance Research 1013), pp.4-17 © Taylor & Francis Ltd 2005 4

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in the digital world. Few, apart from Orwell enthusiasts, would have thought even ten years ago of archiving as a political act. Now that so many large and influential players are involved, constructing the past has become one of the key means of taking control of the future. As a result, I suggest that performance scholars risk giving the game away if they do not take an interest in how their work can and will influence the future through providing structured access to the past.

WHERE WE ARE NOW?

The question of how to archive performance work has become a central one not only for performance historians but also for, what the government has renamed, our 'Cultural Industries'. On December 20, 2004 I attended a Seminar devised to bring together experts in the field of archiving performance hosted by the Globe Education Department. The Globe Archivist and Librarian hoped through this seminar to gain advice about the best way to preserve, over the long term, the work of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. In attendance were the Archivist from the National Theatre, the Head of Library and Information Resources at the Shakespeare Centre Library (which houses the Royal Shakespeare Company's archive), Drama curators for the British Library National Sound Archive and the Theatre Museum's Live Theatre collection as well as the Technology Manager of the BBC Archive and a number of experts from the commercial world. With this wealth of expertise and responsibility in the room one might imagine that high-level negotiations and plans might have emerged for a national centre for the preservation of Shake­spearean performance in Britain. Unfortunately, this is not what took place.

What was detailed at length is the fact that archiving performance is a precarious and expensive business. The BBC Archive hires soo

staff and is committed to investing £so million over the next ten years to transferring delicate and endangered material to new formats.

However, seventy percent of the material stored on its 85 kilometres of shelves is decaying. While paper has been sustainable in its original form for centuries, audio-visual information has not yet found a stable archival format. In fact most performance archives suffer, albeit on a smaller scale, from the huge challenges faced by the BBC in terms of data storage and preser­vation. Currently material about performance exists in formats as varied as wax cylinders, vinyl records, reel-to-reel tape, CD and Beta video. Any small archive trying to maintain access to all of these formats finds it impossible to retain both knowledgeable staff and working equipment to satisfy the needs of even the simplest collection. In theory digital technology provides a solution to the problem of different storage formats, however, the transfer of material to the digital realm is far from straight forward. It is also, for many theatre companies, not financially attainable. So from the outset we find that there is a financial barrier to partici­pating in the digital archiving game.

However, even if it were possible to get past the technical and financial problems, there are still enormous questions of responsibility and intention. 'Who should be responsible for preserving the performance history of British Theatre?' and 'what is it being preserved for?' are the two key questions at stake. While the BBC has a huge archive, it is not their role to preserve and make available cultural history. The archive is preserved and maintained primarily for the purposes of reuse on the BBC. Therefore the material that is perceived to be the most valuable is the material that is most likely to be reused. The British Library Sound Archive and the Theatre Museum both have programmes to record and preserve live performance for researchers and scholars, but by necessity these recordings are selective and can only be made available for research purposes on their respective premises. So while digital technology offers an extraordinary range of possibilities for the performance scholar, practical problems and copyright restrictions

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have prevented any movement towards a coherent over arching programme to preserve and make available the history of Shakespearean performance in the UK.

But there is another issue at play here, and it is a motivational as well as a methodological one. Theatre companies maintain archives to document their practice primarily for their own purposes, to aid further theatrical production. The fact that these archives are then accessible to and useful for the student, scholar and interested member of the public is a service provided by these theatres as an extension of either their education department or their publicity department. It is only since digital forms of preservation and distribution have made the archive a potentially viable commercial entity that theatre companies have begun to take it seriously. But can the development of an archive be based on a purely commercial model? If not, then why should a struggling theatre bother? The Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and Shakespeare's Globe Theatre have all sold images from their archives to the public through their respective shops for a long time. At first this is the model that was seen as desirable on the Web, an on-demand service for individual images. The public, however, are a limited market when it comes to such a service, and quickly it became apparent that it was through education that these theatres might be able to recoup the costs of maintaining an archive. The sudden availability of research funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, money for creating access to cultural heritage through Lottery Funding and funding for developing curriculum packages for the National Curriculum have provided a range of new avenues for income for the large theatre companies. These competing agendas have forced the large theatres to rethink their position on archiving their work, in some cases creating entirely new structures and strategies within these institutions to deal with the challenges. The Royal Shakespeare Company's

Education Department, for example, has more than tripled in size in the past two years.

Over the past decade I have pursued research into the uses of digital technology for the study of performance history at the academic level. During this time I have developed two large digital projects The Cambridge King Lear CD-ROM: Text and Performance Archive and De1:,igning Shake1:,peare: An Audio-vuual Archive 1960-2ooo, <http://ahds.ac.uk/ performingarts/designing-shakespeare> and as a result I have become much more involved in the issues surrounding the preservation of Shakespearean performance history than I ever would have thought possible. In essence what I have stumbled upon is a tangled web of inter­connected cultural agendas that are competing for control of the cultural history in the UK. The two projects I have undertaken have given me the opportunity to experiment in this field and look at the intellectual implications of the uses of new technologies for the study of performance history. These projects have also put me in touch with the key players in this new game and exposed me to a wide range of motivational and methodological models. My experience has led me to understand that any work in this area becomes political even if its only role is to show an alternative view or approach.

A wide range of new resources has been made available online since I began work on the King Lear CD ten years ago. They vary greatly in terms of their professionalism and reliability. While a range of valuable projects exist, presented by scholars and libraries, increasingly some of the most interesting and well-resourced materials online are provided by theatre companies and other educational providers. Looking first at my own work and then at a range of these new resources, it is possible to consider the key questions with which I am now faced. First, who is currently responsible for making performance materials available online? Second, how will teaching of and research into Shakespeare in performance change in response

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to the availability of these new resources? And finally, what can or should the role of the individual scholar be in this complex new landscape? Only after addressing these three questions in some detail is it possible to consider the question of the future responsi­bility of archiving Britain's Shakespearean performance history.

TAKING AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH

TO DOCUMENTING PERFORMANCE

HISTORY

My own work in this field has been fuelled by a desire to test the limitations but also the methodological possibilities of this new technology. As a result, the two projects I have tackled in this area have looked at the question of documenting performance using two very different structural and methodological approaches. The first project I worked on, as co­editor with Professor Jacky Bratton, the King

Lear CD attempted to combine existing methodological approaches, taking scholarly research in an interdisciplinary direction for a wider audience. The second project, De-~;igning Shake-~;peare, aimed to create new materials for the study of performance that shifted the focus of analysis towards the creative process and the temporal and spatial aspects of production. In a sense these two projects provide two methodo­logical approaches to the same question. The first relied on historically tested scholarly approaches to the subject and was distributed through an established academic press. The second opened up new approaches and access using the support provided by newly established academic funding and distribution mechanisms. In both cases, by relying on untested structures that were established by large institutions, the projects were forced to conform to methodological and motivational assumptions that were at times at odds with their intentions. By detailing both the successes and the failures of these endeavours, hopefully I will make plain the reasoning behind my current approach.

Looking first on the positive side of the King

Lear CD; it brings together textual and performance materials from libraries and archives across North America, Australia and the United Kingdom. The CD contains ten texts of the play as it has been performed over the past four hundred years. These texts are present on the disk in full to facilitate close reading of the extensive textual alterations that have occurred. The Quarto and Folio texts are represented both in modern spelling and in facsimile. The CD also contains a significant collection of material to illustrate the performance history of the play. The picture database developed for this project offers an unprecedented opportunity to look at illus­trations of productions of one play over time. The database contains over soo images of the play in performance, collected from archives in Australia, North America and Britain. The images are arranged both chronologically and by act and scene to allow for two kinds of comparison. The aim of this section of the CD was to develop a visual history of the play in performance, and as a result film and television adaptations have been represented in a comparable way to stage productions, through still images.

One considerable innovation that resulted from this project was the Finder text. This conflated text used colour coding to illustrate, in a visual way, the differences between the Quarto and Folio editions. The CD project, therefore, created a new kind of scholarly text. Rather than a primary, authoritative text, the Finder text was devised as a navigational structure that showed the relationship of this text to other texts and visual information, as well as providing access to these resources. Therefore the CD, when it was first published in November 2000, brought together, for the first time, a vast array of materials to represent the textual and performance history of King Lear in order to point out the relationship between these two approaches to the play. This project was designed to give greater access to primary

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research, offering both the materials and the methods of senior scholars to new audiences.

Unfortunately, while digital technology facilitated the creation of research materials of this kind, I soon discovered that their distri­bution could be hampered by a number of factors. The CD was not as widely distributed as I had hoped due, at least in part, to the price imposed by the academic publisher. The fixed format of the CD, sold through conventional publishing distribution routes also undermined the original intent of increased access to this project's resources. Another issue that· hampered this project was one that faces all performance scholars, the issue of copyright. Because the subject of our research is a saleable product and images of performance have vested within them a number of levels of moral as well as ownership rights, we are restricted in our studies in a number of ways. The challenge I faced in my second project was to find a way that I could provide greater access to materials without compromising the rights of the artists involved. When I first began the King Lear CD,

many theatre companies and libraries were uncertain how to proceed in this new environment. At the beginning of the digital revolution there was a great sense of anxiety about the ease with which resources could be copied when distributed online. There was also a tussle over ownership resulting from the mistaken belief that there was a great deal of money to be made from archives in digital form. While it was the case that there was an increasing interest in performance materials, the question arose of whether this interest could be converted into a viable commercial model for theatres.

In order to test the depth of this new interest, the next project I tackled, the official title of which is De..oigning Shake..opeare: An Audio­

vi.Aual Archive 1960-2000 <http://ahds.ac.uk/ performingarts/designing-shakespeare>, brought together a collection of four databases of performance-related information. These include a text database of production credits

and review extracts for all professional productions of Shakespeare in London and Stratford from 1960-2000, an image database of pictures of these productions in performance, a collection of audio and video clips from interviews with designers and a collection of ten virtual models of the theatres most often used for Shakespearean performance. In this project, then, I shifted the approach from looking at one play in depth to addressing the entire canon in less detail, giving students and scholars access to performance-related material that illustrate all of the plays as they were performed during the last forty years of the twentieth century.

The methods used to collect this material differed from the former project, in that much of the material was created or refashioned specifi­cally for this initiative. The distribution of this material also offered a very different approach. The final archive was housed on the servers of the AHDS Performing Arts at the University of Glasgow and therefore, this resource became freely accessible on the web. The AHDS Performing Arts, as part of the national Arts and Humanities Data Service, is responsible for the long-term preservation and distribution of these materials for the academic community. The hurdle of copyright was overcome in this project by drawing on the experience gained in creating the King Lear CD. Photographs were selected from three central archives that had clear ownership of the materials in question and were willing to work in a new way for the benefit of an educational project. Images from the archive of the theatre photographer Donald Cooper, the archive of the RSC held at the Shakespeare Centre Library and the private archive of Janet Arnold, former lecturer in Drama at Royal Holloway, form the core of the project. Access to this material was given to the project at a reduced rate on the condition that the project took on the job of digitizing the images and ensuring their safe distribution. As a result, the material in the archive can be used, free of charge, by students and scholars worldwide for educational purposes.

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In addition to images, this project uses oral accounts of the creative process as a means of archiving the creative process of theatre­making. Interviews with key designers were conducted specifically for this project. While this kind of resource is familiar to performance historians, this project was one of the first to make this kind of material more publicly available. A.less common resource that this project included was virtual models of theatre. These models had been developed as part of the personal research of Chris Dyer, the theatre designer and a co-investigator on the project. He was therefore able to grant public access to these resources. This project thus changed the approach taken to developing research resources in two ways. First, in terms of content, the accepted resources of production information, review extracts and production photographs were enhanced by digital technology and augmented by the less commonly used resources of interviews and virtual models. In terms of form, the Archive was designed in conjunction with theatre prac· titioners with reuse in an educational environment in mind, addressing head-on the issue of intellectual property through a collabo· rative creative process.

As a result of this approach, DeL>igning ShakeL.peare offered, at its moment of launch in February 2003, unprecedented free educational access to online materials for the study of Shakespearean performance in the UK. The availability of this material was designed to encourage a comparative approach to the plays in production across time and place. The inclusion of sound, video and 3D models created a new kind of relationship with its audience, making the work more focused on interaction and the creative process. Thus, this project helped to instigate a free-access model for material about Shakespearean performance history in Britain developed through a collective creation model. So while the King Lear CD followed established scholarly forms of research and distribution the DeL>igning ShakeL.peare

archive approached the Web as an open communications medium drawing on theatrical models of creativity and presentation.

OTHER DIGITAL RESOURCES FOR THE

STUDY OF SHAKESPEAREAN

PERFORMANCE HISTORY

Of course these projects did not develop in isolation. An overview of the kinds of materials now available online for the study of Shake­spearean performance quickly makes concrete the changing nature of the relationship between scholars, libraries, theatres companies, the media and the government in the UK. I would go so far as to suggest that an entirely new landscape is developing. Thus, in order to address my first question about who is currently involved in archiving and disseminating information about performance history in a more thorough way, I will proceed with a quick tour of the new digital landscape in this area. Digital resources for the study of performance now come from a wide range of sources. While some aim to enhance or expand traditional research approaches in the academy there are many which have a promotional or commercial approach. Looking at a selection of currently available resources for the study of Shakespeare online reveals a complex terrain of competing interests.

THEATRE COMPANY WEBSITES

It was not long after the DeL>igning ShakeL>peare project was launched that another similar project was announced. The Royal Shakespeare Company created a new section of their website entitled 'Pictures and Exhibitions'. This site, which was funded by the New Opportunities Fund of the National Lottery, provides free access to 3500 images online from the RSC archive and from the collection of the Shakespeare Centre Library <http://www.rsc.org.uk/picturesandexhi­bitions/jsp/index.jsp>. This database contains both nineteenth-century materials from the library and more recent materials relating to the RSC's own work. While undouptedly a useful

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1 Theatre Companies performing Shakespeare worldwide are listed on the DMOZ Open Directory Project <http://dmoz.org/Arts/ Performing_Arts/Theatre /Shakespeare/Theatre_ Companies/>. Touclv,tone, a service run by the Shakespeare Institute Library, lists theatre companies performing Shakespeare in the UK. <http://www.touchstone. bham.ac.uk/links/ theatre.html>.

resource, the verywide remit presented makes it difficult for this initiative to have a clear focus. This project provides access to an unprece­dented array of resources that otherwise is not easily accessible, including promptbooks and costume designs, however, there is little coherence to the collection and no rationale made available. This project also raises the question of the role of a single theatre company in preserving a balanced view of performance history as a whole.

So while the role of the theatre company, in terms of traditional archiving, remains unanswered, the websites of individual theatre companies present an intriguing example of the very new kinds of information that are now available for the study of Shakespearean performance. Theatre companies are increas­ingly using the Web both as a means of publicity and as a way to illustrate their own production histories.' These sites tend to be complex and multilayered, housing a range of areas that document the work of each department of the theatre. Details about the current season and ticket purchase are usually highlighted, but there is also often information about the education activities and archive of the theatre company, as well as press releases announcing news and events and other information about the theatre's mission and work.

Theatre companies are also becoming increas­ingly aware of the potential of new technologies to engage in a dialogue with their audiences that continues the theatrical experience well beyond the bounds of the theatre building, developing a sense of community amongst their audiences. Shakespeare's Globe Theatre <http: //www.shakespeares-globe.org/navigation/ frameset.htm>, the National Theatre <http: //www.nt-online.org/?lid=2> and the Royal Shakespeare Company <http://www.rsc.org.uk/ learning/9.asp> all have extensive education areas online which extend their ongoing work. The Globe Theatre involves teachers in online discussions, the National Theatre provides study guides to many of their plays online, as

does the RSC. The online materials in all three of these cases are linked to the current theatrical season and therefore can be used to prepare students about to visit these theatres.

Theatre companies, therefore, are seeing the Web as a means of extending the full range of activities of the theatre to a wider audience, and the education departments are often the ones who facilitate these new services. Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, for example, sponsors an 'Adopt an Actor' programme, which puts actors working on current productions in touch with students worldwide. The students are brought into the rehearsal process by regular updates from the actor, but the communication is not just one way. The students are asked to contribute to the actor's research into the character and thereby become involved in the outcome of each rehearsal session. These students may never have entered a professional theatre and may, in fact, live thousands of miles away from their nearest theatre, yet they are able to have an intimate and direct experience of the rehearsal and production process of the plays. This use of digital technology by the theatres establishes a truly new kind of relation­ship with students, engaging them in the creative processes of theatre-making, whether or not they are able to attend live performances in London.

A survey of the many Festivals across North America that specialize in the performance of Shakespeare illustrates the wide variety of approaches that exist in terms of performance of the Bard's work. Looking at Shakespearean productions, within the context of the full repertoire of each of these theatres, gives a great deal of information about local audiences and tastes. The education departments of these theatres often offer lesson plans or work packages, which are free to download. There might also be lists of courses or services the theatre offers to schools in the local area, illus­trating the focus and direction of the theatre's work. Of course the Shakespeare Festival is not exclusively a North American phenomenon. The

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work of theatre companies across the globe is also documented on the Web. Thus, the privileged position of being able to compare performance approaches internationally, which formerly was only available to a wealthy theatre· goer in New York, Tokyo or London, is now available to every scholar or student with a connection to the Web.

SCHOLARLY PROJECTS

Other scholarly projects have approached both the question of Shakespearean performance history and the issue of documenting performance in a number of interesting ways . Tackling the early history of Shakespeare's plays, for example, are projects like the Biographical Index to the Elizabethan Theater <http://shakespeareauthorship.com/bd/> and Shakespeare's Globe Research Database. The first of these projects contains biographies of all the individuals known to have been involved with the theatre in England between 1558-1642. The second resource, developed at Reading University, contains information about the reconstructed playhouse in London and an archive of the history of performances at the Globe 1599-2000. In terms of more recent theatre history, the RSC Performance Database, made accessible on the Shakespeare Centre Library site, contains information about the complete production history of the Royal Shakespeare Company <http://www. shakespeare.org.uk/main/3/339>. In terms of archiving performance more generally, the work of Professor Steve Dixon and his Chameleons group <http://www.mdx.ac.uk/www/epai/pres­encesite/htmlldixonoo.html> as well as the work undertaken by the Practice as Research in Performance (PARIP) Research Centre <http://www.bris.ac.uk/parip/>, based at the University of Bristol, have offered a range of useful models.

Two interesting examples of scholarly sites that look at combining these approaches are the recently completed Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project (CASP) <www.canadian-

shakespeares.ca> and the new Performance History Section of the Internet Shakespeare Editions <http://ise.uvic.ca/>. The Canadian Adaptations project documents the influence of the Bard's work in a national context. The site includes an online anthology of texts, images of performance, interviews with directors and playwrights, essays about the productions as well as video and audio clips of theatre, film and television inspired by Shakespeare. CASP claims to be 'the first research project of its kind anywhere in the world devoted to the systematic exploration and documentation of the ways in which Shakespeare has been adapted into a national, multicultural theatrical practice' (Introduction, <www.canadianshakespeares. ca>). The second project is an off-shoot of an already well-established online resource. The creators of the Internet Shakespeare Editions project are developing a theatre history section of the site, which will document the work of small Shakespearean companies and festivals across North America. Although still in its infancy, the potential of free access to a wealth of information about contemporary North American theatre practices opens up the possibility of substantial new research areas. These two projects suggest the ways in which individual scholars working on collaborative projects can bring together the work of a wide range of theatre activities into a coherent archive that illustrates a particular aspect of Shakespearean performance history.

OTHER M.EDIA OUTLETS

While scholarly projects aim for objectivity and breadth of coverage, the websites of theatre companies illustrate the more commercial uses and practices of the Web, including the different kinds of communication that are possible. Increasingly, there are new players in this arena that pose interesting questions about the future of research into performance. Relatively recently materials about Shakespeare in performance have appeared online from the BBC and Channel4. These resources are invariably

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2 Hamlet on the Rampart!>, a public website designed and maintained by the MIT Shakespeare Project in collaboration with the Folger Shakespeare Library and other institutions, aims to provide free access to an evolving collection of texts, images and film relevant to Hamlet's first encounter with the ghost.

3 The 'Internet Workshop on Shakespeare and Violence' aims to illustrate the issues involved in performing violence on stage. 'Performance Approaches to King Lear' looks at the play from the perspective of a director, a designer and an actor <http: //www.english.ltsn.ac.uk/ designshake/completed/ index.htm>.

directed towards particular productions but often have contextual or teaching materials attached to them. For example, the BBC's King Lear site is focused primarily on the television adaptation of Richard Eyre's National Theatre production, however, it includes interviews with five directors, five actors and the critic Michael Ignatieff, each giving his or her view about the play in performance <http://www.bbc.co.uk/ education/bookcase/lear/>. Channel4's Twelfth Night site is entirely based on the 2003

television adaptation of the play set in present­day London, directed by Tim Supple, but the site includes a teacher's activity guide, which is supported by video clips that are available freely online <http://www.channel4.com/culture/ microsites/T/twelfth_nightlindex.html>.

While broadcasters, and particularly the BBC, have been in the business of creating educational materials for many years, what is new is the free availability online of the views of creative practitioners and extracts of performance. These new sources of illustrative material seem to be expanding. The engagement of the press with digital promotional materials that illustrate performance, such as The Sunday Time.t.l, 'The Month' CD/DVD, which provides coverage of upcoming events, raises new questions. The Guardian has recently added an education section to its website, which again raises the issue of who should be responsible for educational provision and making performance materials available. The area of education, in fact, brings about the most complex struggle for influence, legitimacy and responsibility in creating new approaches to Shakespeare's work in performance. It also focuses attention on the role of Shakespeare within the curriculum and raises the wider debate about the importance of culture in creating a model of society in the future.

NEW TEACHING APPROACHES AND

MATERIALS

Looking at the work of teaching initiatives online, it is possible to begin to address my

second question, which comes naturally out of the first: how will teaching of and research into Shakespeare in performance change in response to the availability of these new resources? For the traditional players, such as the dedicated Shakespeare Libraries, the Internet allows for an extension of existing education activities. The Folger Shakespeare Library has a site that is designed for teachers to communicate with one another to discuss issues of pedagogy as well as find new resources <http://www.folger. edu/education/education.asp>. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust also provides information and support for teachers online <http://www. shakespeare.org.uk/main/7>.

For universities the Internet allows for an unprecedented exchange of teaching materials and approaches. Unfortunately, in practice the exchange between universities, it must be said, has been of a fairly limited kind. There are only a handful of specialized online resources that have been developed for university-level teaching. For example the Hamlet on the Rampart.!. site, which comes out of a research project at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, provides teachers and students with a teaching package that looks at a range of materials that address the first scene in Hamlet <http://shea.mit.edu/ramparts/>.2 The English Subject Centre, which promotes innovation in teaching in the UK, hosts two teaching packages that look at Shakespeare in performance. One looks at 'Images of Violence in King Lear, Titu.t. Andronicu.t. and Othello' while the other looks at 'Performance Approaches to King Lear') In addition to dedicated teaching resources of this kind, reading lists and other support materials for a range of Shakespeare courses taught at universities around the world are also available online. While some of these online offerings provide new approaches to the plays, many simply make more widely available materials that are usually distributed to the students in print form.

Of course scholars also have available to them an increasing range of primary materials online.

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The texts of the plays are widely reproduced both in new scholarly editions, such as those provided by the Internet Shake..Apeare Editioru, and in editions that replicate older scholarship, such as The MIT Complete Work..A of William Shake..Apeare (based on a generic text called the 'Complete Moby Shakespeare' <http://www­tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/>) and the Open Source Shaki?..Apeare (based on the 1866 Globe Shakespeare <http://www.opensourceshake­speare.com/>). The British Library has recently made available its complete collection of pre-1642 Quarto editions of the plays <http://www.bl. uk/treasures/shakespeare/homepage.html> and the University of Pennsylvania Library has made its copy of the Folio of 1623 available online <http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/SCETI/ PrintedBooksNew/index.cfm?TextiD=firstfolio& PagePosition=3>)4. The individual collections of Libraries with an interest in Theatre History are also increasingly being made freely available to the public, for example the Library of Congress's Federal Theatre Project <http://memory.loc.gov/ ammem/fedtp/fthome.html> and the Cleveland Press Shakespeare Photos, 1870-1982 from the Cleveland State University Library <http://www. ulib.csuohio.edu/shakespeare/>.

For both primary and secondary materials scholars can also turn to one of the commercial ventures that make a wide range of materials accessible online through subscription services. Most notable in this area is Thomson's The Shake..Apeare Collection, which has brought together the Arden Texts with Quarto images, prompt books, seventeenth- through nineteenth­century editions, journal articles and other reference works that illuminate the period. A special feature of this product is the Gordon Crosse Theatrical Diaries which detail soo

Shakespeare performances between 1890 and 1953. This kind of commercial project brings with it a kind of established authority, as did The Cambridge King Lear CD. However, the difficulty with this kind of authority is that it is inevitably linked only to past scholarship. I suggest that this venture, like all commercial

ventures, is inherently conservative and therefore will be unlikely to lead, influence or even follow at any great speed the future of scholarship in this area.

NEW COLLABORATIVE VENTURES

The future, I suggest, is in the hands of those both willing and able to experiment with the new technology available to us. After several years of struggling, experimental work in this area, there appears to be a significant new development in the form of newly funded government initiatives at both the schools and higher education levels that are designed to be forward-looking. Multimedia technology and broadband connectivity are rapidly changing what is possible on the Web. This, combined with the government's mandate to have whiteboard technology in every school in the country, provides further fuel and funding for a movement towards teaching Shakespeare in performance in the classroom through digital technology. While in the first instance the various organizations involved in Shake­spearean performance and education tried to tackle creating resources on their own, a series of second-generation projects are now emerging that involve collaboration between sectors that reap the benefit of past experiences. These are the methodological examples I see as having the greatest impact in the future, and I would like to draw attention to two important developments of this kind.

The first is a broadband project that has been funded by the government but has been carried out by theatre companies working with professional web developers. The Stagework project <http://www.stagework.org.uk/> documents the work of the National Theatre, the Bristol Old Vic Theatre and the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and was commissioned by Culture Online, part of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. The project involves an in depth study of four productions: Henry V and Hu Dark Materialll at the National Theatre, Bea..At..A and Beautie..A at the Bristol Old Vic and

4 Produced by the University of Pennsylvania Library, this site provides free access to a high quality facsimile reproduction of the Furness Shakespeare Library copy of the First Folio. The Furness Shakespeare web page also contains facsimile reproductions of other important texts from the period, including Quarto texts of King Lear and Othello.

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5 '£4.5 Million Performance Partnership for Royal Shakespeare Company and University of Warwick', Press Release issued by the RSC, 27 January 2005.

The press release also includes the statements by Jonathan Bate and Michael Boyd, quoted immediately below.

The Crucible at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. In each case, interviews with the cast members plus creative and technical teams are made available along with extracts from rehearsal and performance. The interface for each production has been created in the form of a time-line that maps out the rehearsal period in several different areas, Performance, Creative, Technical and Production Adminis­tration. Each production also includes an introduction, a plot synopsis and a rehearsal diary.

The information about each play i·s then arranged thematically on subjects such as 'nationality and race' and 'images of war' for Henry Vand 'staging miracles' and 'Fable to Stage' for BeaJ>tA and Beautiel>. The site also allows the user to approach the materials through an interface that focuses on the people involved, using the theatre building as a naviga­tional device. Finally, there is a section devoted to teachers that offers specific advice about how to use these materials at various key stages and provides lesson plans. This site seems to offer a much more serious engagement with the full capabilities of this new medium for the study of performance. The full creative process is documented, and a wide range of experiences and involvement in that process are highlighted. Students are given the opportunity to have a member of the cast or crew speak directly to them about the issues addressed in the play. This kind of approach seems a great leap forward both in terms of the use of the technology and in the sense that this new approach could fundamentally change the way the plays are studied.

A second new initiative, aimed at higher education, is the establishment of a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, co­sponsored by Warwick University and the Royal Shakespeare Company. This Centre offers another model of the way in which central governmental funding is supporting the development of work in this area. The press release announcing this venture states:

The University of Warwick and the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) have formed a £4.5 million performance partnership. The new partnership will use theatre performance skills and experience to enhance student learning and will draw deep on University research and resources to shape the development of the RSC acting companies.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England has today, Thursday ~7th January, awarded the University of Warwick £4.5 million from HEFCE's Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) initiative to create a new centre which will be at the heart of this partnership.5

From Warwick University Professor Jonathan Bate in the announcement states:

The process of making theatre is an interesting model for good practice in teaching and learning - a good student experience is akin to a good rehearsal process. The new Centre will enable us to explore and exploit a teaching model that offers some of the most important transferable skills we can give our students: the ability to think oneself into the other person's point of view, to work as part of a team, and to find answers through the process of framing good questions.

Artistic Director of the RSC Michael Boyd adds:

This is a great marriage. When a theatre company like the RSC and a university with Warwick's resources collaborate, the partnership is worth much more than the sum of its parts. If our ambition at the RSC is for a place where artists can learn and make theatre at the same time, then this project is a valuable part of our journey to that goal.

The scale of the impact of this new Centre is hard to anticipate at this point. It is encouraging that the focus of this new venture is on creating and promoting new teaching approaches that both generate performance materials and new performance-oriented ways of working. It is clearly an example of the fact that large well-funded projects are now emerging. The present government in the UK is

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certainly interested in supporting teaching in this area. While this could spell a more coordinated approach, there is also the danger

that large centres of this kind may supersede the work of smaller and more individual

projects. It is my hope that this does not happen.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

In this environment of increasingly large initiatives, we are left with the question: is there room for work of the individual academic in this complex and competitive environment? I suggest that there is one clear way in which the

individual or small group of scholars might continue to work productively, and that is to

create alternative models to the increasingly powerful mainstream, pointing out the agendas and exclusions of mainstream activity. Increas­ingly, as resources continue to emerge, it will be

our role to evaluate these new sources of information and make useful connections between them. What is required is a strategy in which established ways of working with Shake­spearean texts and existing scholarship combine with new approaches and materials to create a structure to address this complex

environment. The aim of this approach must be to help to create meaning out of the many resources now available online, clarifying the quality and reliability of these resources for the less experienced user.

The role of the individual scholar, then, will

increasingly be that of the knowledgeable guide. Taking this new role seriously provides a way forward which is both empowering and manageable. I suggest that a single scholar or small groups of scholars can usefully enter into the larger debate, about how we archive our

cultural heritage by drawing together existing and developing resources. Rather than waiting for a coordinated approach to archiving and distribution of material to develop, I suggest each scholar come up with an individual approach. This strategy will hopefully inspire a debate about what is being archived and how the archiving process is funded, as much as it will

inspire a discussion about the performance

history of any particular play. To my mind, such an engaged debate would be the most sophisti­cated possible use of the extraordinary technology at our disposal.

CONCLUSIONS

The Internet hosts a wealth of information for the study of Shakespeare, and each day the

collection grows. The resources that are currently available on the Internet far exceed

anything that has been available in the past to an individual teacher or researcher. However, all of the information is partial or particular in its aims. The advent of broadband multimedia technology, in particular, has allowed for the demonstration of more aspects of the performance history of the plays than ever before. When faced with such a range of resources, it is hardly surprising that many

users of digital resources give up before discovering the richness of what is available. The purpose, structure and proposed audience for the resources I have described are extremely wide-reaching. The availability online of

formerly unavailable or restricted materials, such as production images and interviews with actors and directors, is a tremendous development. It is not surprising, however, that the organizations that hold the copyright for these resources want to maintain control of their distribution. Commercial interests in this area, as well as the issues of copyright and intel­

lectual property, cannot be ignored. It is my hope, however, that collaborative arrangements between universities, libraries, archives and theatre companies may continue to develop, and that new approaches and new standards of practice continue to emerge.

How will teaching of and research into

Shakespeare in performance change in response to the availability of these new resources? I believe that new kinds of writing and teaching must be developed to incorporate these new materials into the educational process. The development of large collaborative initiatives

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designed specifically to create materials and new practices for teaching in this field signals a potential for real change. Both the StageworkA project at the schools level and the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the Higher Education level show the integration of the work of theatre companies with educational specialists. Of course, it is important to point out that, as a result of the availability of new online resources, there are also many kinds of informal learning going on outside the classroom. The interactive nature of .these new developments means that students and other online participants in the debate can help to create new educational and research strategies alongside professional lecturers, researchers, librarians and theatre practitioners. The cultural impact and the investment in the study and production of Shakespeare mean that any new development will inevitably engage both a public and a commercial audience. As a result, it is important that a debate about the means of production of the dominant resources be maintained? This is an important role I see for the individual academic.

Thus, I come to answer my final question: what can or should be the role of the individual scholar in this complex new landscape? It is my hope that in our new millennium we will continue to see an increase in collaboration between scholars and between publicly funded institutions to help develop quality resources that can be enjoyed by the widest possible audience. I think that only through collaborative efforts of this kind will it be possible to develop a digital environment that is both informative and engaging for the creators and the users of these research tools. Of course, the alternative meaning of collaboration must also be kept in mind. Working too closely with individual theatre companies may result in a narrowing of academic breadth or the softening of critical perspective. This must be avoided. While some areas of the Internet have lost their collective spirit, I hope that scholarly research resources can continue to draw on a collaborative

working method that aims to expand areas of knowledge for the benefit of all users, regardless of their location or affiliations. The role I suggest for the scholar, as a guide through these new resources, offering structure and coherence as well as suggesting new research areas and approaches, must be one that stands at a critical distance from commercial concerns.

The future of this field remains uncertain. It

is my hope that there will continue to be a balance between large, institutional collabora· tions and smaller more individualized scholarly projects. The establishment of the Arts and Humanities Research Council as a Research Council in the UK provides an opportunity for individual scholarly endeavours to persist. The impact of these smaller projects, in a landscape where there are increasingly large commercial and institutional beasts to contend with, is questionable. However, if the independence of scholarly thought is to be maintained, such projects must continue to thrive even if only to pose uncomfortable questions about responsi· bility and power distribution. It is this role that my projects will continue to pursue in the future, and I hope that others will feel the need to join me in this important debate.

SHAKESPEARE IN PERFORMANCE

ONLINE RESOURCES

Scholarly research projects Designing Shakespeare <http://ahds.ac.uk/ performingarts/designing·shakespeare>

Biographical Index to the Elizabethan Theater <http: //shakespeareauthorship.com/bd/>

Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare <www. canadianshakespeares.ca>

Internet Shakespeare Editions <http://ise.uvic.ca/>

Library projects RSC Archive- Pictures and Exhibitions <http://www. rsc.org,uk/picturesandexhibitions/jsplindex.jsp>

The Library of Congress Federal Theatre Project <http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fedtp/fthome.html>

Cleveland Press Shakespeare Photos, 1870-1982 from

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the Cleveland State University Library <http://www. ulib.csuohio.edu/shakespeare/>

COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH SERVICES

Touchestone's Traffic of the Stage and Database <http: //www.touchstone.bham.ac.uk/performance.html> <http://www.touchstone.bham.ac.uk/database.html>

Backstage <http://www.backstage.ac.uk/>

COMPILED LISTS OF THEATRE

COMPANY WEBSITE$

Theatre companies worldwide on the Virtual Library site: <http://vl-theatre.com/>

Theatre Companies performing Shakespeare worldwide <http://dmoz.org/Arts/Performing_Arts/ Theatre/Shakespeare/Theatre_ Companies/>

TOUCHSTONE LIST OF THEATRE

COMPANIES PERFORMING

SHAKESPEARE IN THE UK

<http://www.touchstone.bham.ac.uk/links/theatre.html>

SHAKESPEARE FESTIVALS LIST FROM

THE MR WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND

THE INTERNET SITE

<http://shakespeare.palomar.edu/festivals.htm>

INDIVIDUAL THEATRE COMPANY

WEBSITES

Royal Shakespeare Company <http://www.rsc.org.uk/ home/index. asp>

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre <http://www. shakespeares-globe.org/>

The National Theatre <http://www.nt-online.org/ home.html>

Stratford Festival, Ontario, Canada <http://www. stratford-festival.on.ca/>

Bremer Shakespeare Company, Germany <http://www. shakespeare-company.com/>

HIGHER EDUCATION RESOURCES

Hamlet on the RampartA, MIT Shakespeare Project in collaboration with the Folger Shakespeare Library <http://shea.mit.edu/ramparts>

The Higher Education Academy English Subject Centre Shakespeare Resources <http://www.english. ltsn.ac.uk/designshake/completed/index.htm>

TEXTUAL RESOURCES

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, MIT <http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/>

Open Source Shakespeare <http://www. opensourceshakespeare.com/>

British Library, Treasures in Full: Shakespeare in Quarto <http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/ homepage.html>

University of Pennsylvania Library, Folio of 1623 <http: //dewey.library.upenn.edu/SCETI!PrintedBooksNew/ index.cfm?TextiD=firstfolio&PagePosition=3>

Thomson, The Shake1>peare Collection <http://www. galeuk.com/shakespeare/>

MEDIA EDUCATION RESOURCES

BBC Resources: King Lear website <http://www.bbc. co.uk/education/bookcase/lear/>

Channel4 Learning Resources Twelfth Night website <http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/T/ twelfth_night/index.html>

BROADBAND PROJECTS

Stagework <http://www.stagework.org.ukl>

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