Stage set for Australia's first theatre database

A University of Queensland researcher is helping to compile the first on-line database of Australian theatre.

The Australian Performing Arts Database will be a searchable collection housing theatre reviews and information about actors, playwrights, venues and related materials. Eventually, it will include visual material such as film clips.

It will also incorporate materials dating back to the first recorded performance in Australia in 1789 - the year after settlement.

Accessible by academics, postgraduate students, performers, directors, playwrights, the theatre industry and interested members of the public, the database will make research in Australian theatre substantially easier.

Eight universities received a 2000-01 Australian Research Council Research Infrastructure Equipment and Facilities (RIEF) grant of $120,000 for the project with cash and in-kind contributions from each partner increasing resources to $422,000. UQ, together with the lead institution, Flinders University, are the biggest university cash contributors to the project.

Database management committee representative and English Department senior lecturer Dr Joanne Tompkins said Australia had a rich and unique theatrical history not only in home-grown plays but in the way overseas plays were interpreted here.

"The database will document performances into the future as well as facilitate research into theatre history. The project will link smaller, valuable research projects dating from 1850. These projects are currently incompatible with each other, and some remain in paper form," Dr Tompkins said.

A first step in compiling the new database would be identifying additional existing
collections scattered throughout Australia, she said. "The database will be a key way of continuing the important role of the Australia and New Zealand Theatre Record - a compilation of all Australian theatre reviews which operated from 1987 until 1996 when it ran out of funding," she said.

Dr Tompkins said the project placed great emphasis on collaboration - between universities, business, software developers and providers and the theatre industry itself. The Australian newspaper had offered in-kind support in the form of waiving copyright for uploading their theatre reviews.

"The Performing Arts Special Interest Group (PASIG) also has a special collaborative role to play. As representatives of performing arts museums and collections, they often receive valuable research materials from actors and theatre companies. PASIG plans to participate in a later stage of the database project, including in the inputing of data," she said.

For more information, contact Dr Joanne Tompkins (telephone 07 3365 1435) or Shirley Glaister in the Communications Office (telephone 07 3365 2339).