Digitizing performance history: where do we go from here?

Abstract

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 motivational 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. Performance scholars, I suggest, must become aware of how their work can and will influence the future through providing structured access to the past.