Creating Digital Performance Resources
A Guide to Good Practice

Performing Arts Data Service
Guide to Good Practice
Creating Digital Performance Resources

SECTION 2: Digital Resources in Performance Studies

2.2: Creating a multipurpose research tool for the study of King Lear

Christie Carson

Over the past four years I have worked on the Cambridge King Lear CD-ROM: Text and Performance Archive. The purpose of this section is to use this process as a case study to take you through the process of managing a digital project of this size and scale. Initially the creation of a multimedia project was likened to creating a digital library of material. More realistically, however, it has been compared with the creation of a small feature film. In keeping with this second description I will divide the process into four phases:

1) Planning and Design
2) Research
3) Production and
4) Post-production.

By tracing the Lear project through these four phases it will be possible to outline the overall structure of such a project, allowing me to divide my advice for project management into discrete sections.

1. Planning and Design

There is a maxim in film-making that every dollar spent in pre-production is worth two spent in production. This is very sound advice when it comes to the planning of a multimedia project of any size, regardless of the budget. Careful planning and a clear design, which includes a well defined intellectual framework, is an essential starting point for any project which is to succeed.

1.1 Creating a Framework

Part of the intellectual framework must be a reason (or several) for doing the project in this format in the first place. For the Lear project there were three. The first was to create a new edition of the play through the creation of the Finder Text. The second justification for a digital project was to draw together materials about the play that could be reassembled in different ways, thereby drawing together the work of two separate disciplines. The third underlying justification for this project has been to take advantage of another strength of this medium, giving access to information which would otherwise not be available to students or researchers not able to visit London, Stratford-upon-Avon, Washington or New York. In order to collect this material I spent a full year in research libraries where I was admitted only after obtaining a readers card which was offered to me because of this specific project. This is not a means by which to encourage discovery. Through this project I hope that students and scholars will encounter materials but also ideas and approaches which they would not normally come across. If your reasons for doing a project in this medium are not absolutely clear and compelling it may be sensible to find another means to express your ideas. A book will always be easier, quicker and more certain.

Turning to the King Lear project, I will start by outlining the fundamental premise which underpins the archive. The issue at the centre of this research tool is a desire to highlight the fact that this text has had as many variations as it has had performances. The key aim of the project, therefore, is to highlight the fluidity of the text over time. As a result, it was agreed that the material presented had to illustrate performance variations through printed text, performance history support material and a database of illustrations relating to the play in performance.

In order to illustrate temporal fluidity a structural model for the project was developed. Therefore, at the centre of the project are two timelines. The first is the timeline of the play. The second is the historical timeline of performance. In order to illustrate both of these progressions of time, it was decided the illustrations of performance, would be displayed both chronologically and by act and scene. In order to draw all of the information about the play together it was also decided that the text itself would become a navigational tool. The Finder Text, which has become the backbone of the project, is a conflation of the Quarto and Folio texts. This text, which I have created myself, is an extensively hypertexted new edition of the play which has linked to it all the commentary notes and apparatus from the New Cambridge Shakespeare edition of the play and the staging notes from Jacky Bratton's Plays in Performance edition. As a conflated text was used for performance for the hundred and fifty years after Macready reinstated the Shakespearean text (from 1834 to the mid 1980s) it was seen as essential to have an edition of the play which could reflect that performance tradition. This new text is unique in that it offers a conflated text which highlights in different colours those lines present only in either the Quarto or the Folio. As a result it provides an unprecedented means of studying the textual variations in the play. Unlike formerly published parallel texts this new Finder text will combine all of the information into a single text which is supported by further links to information from Jay Halio's textual analysis.

1.2 Deciding on the Design

Assuming that you do wish to proceed and you now know what you are doing and why, it is possible to move on to how it must be done. When creating projects of this kind, particularly in the context in which I am working (that is with one of the most revered canonical texts to be published by one of the most respected academic presses) it is essential to look at the suppositions which underlie the work you are doing. In some respects I have replicated old forms of scholarship, in a new medium. I have created a new, slightly more convenient, edition of the play. But I hope I have done more. Through providing additional material which supports or possibly gives the user evidence to question that traditional scholarship I hope that I have exposed traditional scholarship to scrutiny. Also, by bringing together the approaches of textual and performance scholars, I hope to have opened the door to a new hybrid form of research in this area which draws on the strengths of both of these established forms.

The hypertext links which I have used in the King Lear CD-ROM project are designed to replicate existing methods of connecting information but also to introduce new forms. How this model differs from the model which is used by online dictionaries and encyclopaedias is in the fact that while some conclusions are presented there is room for further research and also sufficient material on the disk to challenge the conclusions of the experts presented. The CD has been laid out in a linear way due to the fact that this is the only way in which Dynatext will display information, with a Table of Contents down the left margin. But as with any research tool, the user is not expected to read it in a linear fashion. As I have already noted, the play itself has been used as an additional navigational device and the search engine present in the software allows for all manner of additional personalised pathways through the materials.

This project addresses, in an indirect way, two of the points which are at the root of hypertext theory and practice. The first is the idea of creating an active user. In the Lear CD there are an almost infinite number of pathways through the material. The users get to decide on the pathways they will take and are spurred on by their interests not by what I, as editor, have chosen to put before them next. The second point which is raised is whether or not the same information is the same information if the route to it is different. When designing non-linear projects of this kind it is essential to make information
available in a way that makes sense in any order. Is coming upon a passage in Tate's text which differs greatly from the Shakespearean text the same if you find it on your own or if you go there through a guided link? The framework you have created must find concrete form in a design plan.

1.3 Deciding on the Content

Once the intellectual framework and design structure are in place it is possible to determine the materials which will be needed to accomplish the intended outcome successfully. In the case of the Lear project this resulted in a decision to include ten full texts of the play. Seven of these are encoded digital texts: the New Cambridge Shakespeare Edition of the Quarto and the Folio, both edited by Jay Halio, the Tate Adaptation of 1681, the Rowe Edited edition of 1709, Garrick's performance text as recorded in the Bell edition of 1773, Macready's performance text recorded in Lacy's edition of 1857 and Charles Kean's performance text which he published in 1858. Two of these full texts would appear as facsimile images of the original editions, the Trinity College Cambridge copy of the Quarto of 1608 and the Hinman selection of the Folio of 1623 supplied by the Folger Shakespeare Library. The final text to be included was, of course, the extensively hypertexted new edition of the play, the Finder Text.
In addition to the texts and their notes which support the texts, it was decided that the archive would contain an extensive database of performance information. This would include a list of English language performances from 1605 to 1998 and a database of images relating to the play in performance from 1738 to 1998. A series of five essays which detail the textual and performance history of the play would form the critical section of the disk. Finally, additional reference material was added, including biographies of actors, directors and writers, productions reviews and bibliographic information to support further research on the subject.

1.4 Combining Structure with Content - Defining the Audience

The audience is something you should think about when you create your framework: however, you will be forced to reassess that audience as you make content and design choices. In the Lear example, as a result of the decisions made about the design structure and content, the archive contains only text and still images. Time, money and copyright restrictions made the use of sound and moving images impossible on this project. These were not, of course, the only issues considered when this choice was made. In fact there are a number of strong underlying philosophical reasons for this choice. First, as the aim of the project was to show multiple performance texts it was seen as essential that no one performance be highlighted or given greater weight through audio or visual representation. Second, as this archive documents the entire history of the play's performance it was felt that those performances which took place before recording equipment was invented should not be so disadvantaged in their representation against more recent productions. By choosing to use text and still images it has been possible to document the entire four hundred year history in a manner which is relatively even-handed. Finally, the vast majority of the moving images available were from television and film adaptations of the play rather than theatrical performances. It was decided from the outset that while film and television adaptations would be documented alongside other representations and adaptations of the play they would not be highlighted and certainly should not be confused with theatrical performances, the main focus of the archive. Given that our intended audience was university English and Drama Departments the emphasis placed on textual information and still images relating to performance was deemed both appropriate and manageable.

1.5 Creating a Budget

Once you have a clear sense of the framework, design, content and audience you must turn your attention to practical concerns. Two things are essential to recognise from the outset in terms of budgeting such projects; multimedia projects are expensive and time consuming. It is essential to acknowledge that research resources in the performing arts have a market value. Educational projects in this area, while worthy, may not receive the kind of exceptions which other forms of academic publishing have seen. The copyright holders in our area have made a concerted effort over the four years of my work on the CD to create pricing policies which reflect use. Nevertheless it is important to approach the budgeting of such a project from a realistic position.

Unlike the creation of a book or other scholarly project a budget is essential from the outset. Budgets must realistically assess the value of staff time which will be spent on the project. Often academics do not value their own time sufficiently. However, given that digital projects can take untold hours of work it is important to place parameters on your time and the time of anyone else working on the project. Often the capital expense of equipment is seen as the most important cost in such projects when if fact the main expenditure categories will be salaries, training costs or the cost of buying in expertise and consumable costs, including pursuing cul de sacs of various kinds.

To generalise, the main areas of expenditure which you will have to cover in any project are equipment, research expenses, training, external expertise, purchasing copies of research materials, digitization expenses, publication permission fees and staff time.

Multimedia projects of any size or scale should be approached professionally. Grants are available from a number of sources to cover costs - the Arts and Humanities Research Board, Lottery Funding and the Leverhume Trust to name a few - but all these sources will expect a realistic budget breakdown and report of expenditure. Do not underestimate the labour-intense nature of such projects or the special skills required. At every stage it will be necessary to balance the cost of paying for outside expertise and services versus buying equipment and training staff to do the work yourselves. Try to be realistic about your own strengths and weaknesses and budget accordingly.

I cannot stress enough the importance of the first five steps in this process:
i) creating a framework
ii) deciding on the design
iii) defining the content
iv) defining the audience
v) creating a budget.

If the structure, design and overall plan for the content are not clear it will be very difficult to proceed with any degree of confidence. If you do not have a sense of your audience and a clearly defined budget a great deal of time and money can be wasted chasing materials that you might use. If you think through the projects aims and objectives clearly from the outset you should be in a position to pursue only those materials which you really want. In terms of the film analogy what you really want at the end of your planning phase is a storyboard, a production schedule and a detailed audience profile. The analogy breaks down, however, when you look at the materials which are wasted in the production process of film. Ideally with a careful planned multimedia project, you should end up with very little on the cutting room floor.

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