All entries for Thursday 03 February 2011

Early Modern London Theatres Database now online

Writing about web page http://emlot.cch.kcl.ac.uk/

On Tuesday, I attended the launch of the new Early Modern London Theatres website. Connected to the Records of Early English Drama project, which is producing a frankly terrifying amount of data about the material conditions of early modern theatre, this database is a major new resource for theatre historians.

The strengths of the site are in the detail. It not only provides a bibliography of all early evidence pertaining to the theatres, companies and personnel of the London stage, but also provides a (reasonably comprehensive) guide to where that early evidence has been reprinted and discussed. It thus becomes not only a bibliography, but a study of historical interpretation. The Learning Zone section of the website gives a demonstration of the potential in relation to the Cockpit Riots.

I have a couple of initial reservations, based on my experience testing the first draft of the site, but these are to be resolved. The timelines of data are very busy at the moment, and require some patience to interpret. I'm also slightly uncomfortable with the 'faceted search' option, which has the potential both to open up entirely new areas for exploration but also to lead people down dead ends as they follow through the pre-determined categories. These are only user-based quibbles though; and with a database of this scope and variety, one might argue that there is no search mechanism that could fully open up the available data.

What I hope the website does allow in time is for users to upload their own lesson plans using the database. The Learning Zone is an ideal example; but I'm not sure how many theatre courses might cover the Cockpit riots. It'll be fascinating to see how academics use this opportunity to expand their own teaching.

: 03 Feb 2011 13:42 |  Tags: News Seminars |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem