Abstract

This session brings together a key group of performing arts scholars who have transformed research into live performance through the AusStage Project. It will showcase new eResearch methods for visualising information on the performing arts and raise questions regarding the impact of these analytical tools on performing arts research.

Background to the AusStage Project

AusStage is a platform for collaborative research in the performing arts which brings together university researchers, industry partners, government agencies and postgraduate students. Initiated in 2000 by a consortium of Australian universities and developed with over 1.5 million dollars in funding from partners and the Australian Research Council, AusStage now comprises: (1) an accessible relational database incorporating information on over 40,000 performance events, and associated venues, organisations, and artists; (2) an integrated directory of resources with links to digitised text, image and video stored in libraries, archives and repositories; and (3) a suite of innovative eResearch methodologies for mapping the creativity of live performance over time and space and visualising networks of collaboration between artists.

Session Structure

Professor Adrian Kiernander (University of New England) will provide an overview of the AusStage Project and the current research applications of the database.

Prof Julie Holledge will concentrate of the application of time-mapping to performing arts research. She will demonstrate how this technology can assist researchers with the identification of the major political, economic, and social flows responsible for transporting theatrical productions around the globe. To illustrate this methodology, she has time-mapped the production history of one of the most performed plays of the twentieth century: Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Her presentation will focus on the implications for future theatre historiography of this eResearch methodology.

Dr Jonathan Bollen and Dr Glenn McGillivray will demonstrate new methods for visualising networks of collaboration between artists. Network graphs depicting artists' associations with venues, companies and other artists will be presented. These visualisations afford new opportunities for investigating patterns of creativity in artist networks, career pathways, company programming and cultural policy.

Neal Harvey from the University of Queensland will discuss the implications of blogging for performing arts research.

The session will conclude with guided discussion between participants on the implications of these eResearch methodologies for new directions in performing arts research.

AusStage is at http://www.ausstage.edu.au

About the speaker

Julie Holledge is Professor of Drama at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. She began her career as an actor and director in the British alternative theatre movement, before moving to Australia in the 1980s. She has dramaturged new performance works for international theatre festivals in Australia, China, Korea, and Japan; and was the research director of the first National Cultural Diversity Cluster to be funded by the Australia Council for the Arts. She has written widely in the area of women’s theatre and performance; in 2002, with her co-author Joanne Tompkins, she was awarded the Rob Jordan Book Prize for Women’s Intercultural Performance (Routledge 2000). She is a member of the Ibsen Between Cultures Project which is funded through the Norwegian Government; and is the Chair of the Steering Committee of Women Playwrights International. She is a CI with the AusStage project.