Designing Shakespeare has been developed to help students and scholars gain a greater understanding of the work of theatre designers working in Britain during the last forty years of the previous century.

It has also been designed to illustrate the vast range of possible interpretations of Shakespeare's work.

This research resource is unusual in that it draws together the work of a range of people, theatre designers, archivists and librarians at the Theatre Museum and the Shakespeare Centre Library with the support work of AHDS Performing Arts.

It is also unusual in that it is not designed to be a finished or final piece of work. Rather it hopes to act as an example of how the disparate elements used in theatre research can usefully be drawn together into a single database. It is also designed to illustrate the advantages of digital technology for the study of performance history. Ideally this project should be seen as a cornerstone onto which further research projects in the area of theatre history might be built.

The production details database covers all professional productions of Shakespeare in Stratford and London over the 40 year period of examination. Illustrations are available for approximately seventy percent of the productions listed.

In the Additional Information section you will find more information about a) how to use the collection; b) copyright; and c) research methods, collection policy and metadata.

All the materials in the database have been made freely available for educational use, however, any commercial use of this material must involve a licensing agreement with the copyright holders.

This database draws on already existing archives to create a new collection of material with a very particular focus -– the performance history of Shakespeare in Britain over the forty year period of 1960 - 2000. Each portion of the Archive is drawn from different sources so it is best to deal with each one separately.

Production details and review excerpts: The starting point and the backbone of the project is the production details database. At the centre of this database are records generated from the FESTE database at the Shakespeare Centre Library for all the productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company. For London productions Plays and Players and the London Theatre Record were used as a starting point for research. All of the records generated from these sources were then cross-referenced and verified against the photographic record of Donald Cooper and the Theatre Museum's production files. Definitions of what constitutes a London-based production were therefore largely pre-determined by the selection processes of the two theatre journals and the Theatre Museum. It was the decision of the project's Principal Investigator not to include the National Youth Theatre, performances by Drama Schools or other amateur or semi-professional groups. A wide range of pub, outdoor and site-specific productions have been included, however, the criteria of professional production had to be met. If users would like to draw attention to errors or omissions please contact Dr. Christie Carson, comph@rhul.ac.uk

Image Database: The photographs have been selected from three archives. The first is the private archive of the theatre photographer Donald Cooper who has been one of the leading theatrical photographers in the United Kingdom since 1970. Donald Cooper's archive covers a wide range of productions in both Stratford and London that were taken primarily at photocalls or dress rehearsals. As a result, they are taken from the front of the stage area and are extremely useful for illustrating costume and set detail.

The second primary archive used was the Tom Holte Theatre Photographic Collection at the Shakespeare Centre Library in Stratford-upon-Avon. These photographs cover the period from 1960 to 1983 and were taken exclusively of the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre from the front of the dress circle. As a result, these images are extremely useful in giving a wider view of the set and stage relations. These images should be credited as in the metadata for any form of use.

The last photographic archive used was the personal slide library of Janet Arnold, costume designer and lecturer at Royal Holloway University of London. These are not professional photographs and rather represent the perspective of an informed audience member. These images were usually taken during dress rehearsals and therefore are extremely effective in showing sets and costumes in action, often emphasising lighting states and stage movement. Janet Arnold also photographed costumes, costume designs and models. These have been included where permission was received from the designer in question. It must be stressed that these photographs were taken by a member of the theatre design profession, with the understanding and consent of her peers. Photography in the theatre is illegal and the inclusion of these images in no way supports the unlawful capture of theatre imagery.

All of the images in the database have been selected to illustrate aspects of the production design of each show. All rights remain with the copyright holders as indicated in the metadata. These images have been cleared for educational use only. For all other forms of use please see the copyright page.

Video Interviews: The video interviews were generated for this project by Dr. Christie Carson. The designers selected for interview were chosen based on the number of productions of Shakespeare they had designed, the period when they were designing, the kind of theatre they were designing for and their availability and willingness to participate in the project. An attempt was made to get as wide a range of perspectives as possible.

These interviews have again been made freely available for non-commercial use, however, the content of these interviews remains the copyright of Royal Holloway College. For other forms of use please see the copyright page.

VRML Models: The VRML models were developed from theatre plans by Chris Dyer, theatre designer and Research Fellow at Royal Holloway University of London. The theatres selected were chosen based on the frequency of performance of Shakespeare's plays. The models allow for free roaming within them but a series of viewpoints have been selected to show the stage from specific vantage points in the audience. Three figures have been placed on the stage to show scale and illustrate the relative size of the performances spaces. The distance between the three figures remains the same in each theatre model.

Metadata Conventions: The metadata conventions were established in consultation with the Performing Arts Data Service. Dublin Core conventions were used for creating records for all of the objects in the database. The overarching assumption in cataloguing the information was that each item would relate in some way to a production or a series of productions. This means that the primary object category is a text record relating to a time-based event. All of the other objects which relate to that production are, in a sense, sub-categorisations of the production-level hierarchy. As a result, a search for a particular actor, director, theatre or even year will bring up a list of productions which relate to that search term and, as a result, all of the materials linked to that central list of events. All four kinds of data are searched simultaneously with each query and the results are displayed using icons and thumbnails for the images, models and video clips and full text retrieval for the production details.