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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
The site collects information on Australian drama, music theatre and dance events and related material.
The site includes current data, collected from 1 January, 2001; and retrospective data, including data from the Australian & New Zealand Theatre Record (ANZTR), the Wolanski Program Collection at the Library of the University of New South Wales, and the National Library Collection (PROMPT). (AusStage website)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Documenting Australian Society – Performing Arts Community of Practice
2023
single work
essay
— Appears in: Archives and Manuscripts , vol. 51 no. 1 2023; (p. 29-31)'While the performing arts are a vitally important dimension of the cultural life of Australia, the performances themselves are often ephemeral and difficult to document in an enduring form. This article describes a successful, collaborative, community of practice-based model for ensuring the creation and curation of performing arts documentation in Australia. The collaboration involves key national professional and industry organisations and peak bodies, working together to ensure that important documentation is identified, preserved, and made available via the AusStage research and discovery platform.'(Publication abstract)
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Visualising the Story of Theatre in Sydney : Venues, Repertoire and Change, 1920-2020
2021
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , May no. 78 2021; (p. 72-109)'Theatre is sometimes imagined as an art form at risk. From movies and television to global pandemics, these risks to theatre are significant and their impact on production is real. In Sydney, which provides a locus for this study, the arrival of talking pictures in the 1920s and the advent of broadcast television in the 1950s coincided with the demise of commercial enterprises and the demolition of old theatres in the city centre. More recently, the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on theatre programming and venue management is playing out across the city.' (Publication abstract)
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Local Archive, Distant Reading : Performance Space At Cleveland Street And Carriageworks
2020
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , April no. 76 2020; (p. 6-7) 'Founded in 1983, Sydney's Performance Space spent almost quarter of a century at 199 Cleveland Street, Redfern, before moving to Carriageworks in 2007. In doing so, it gave up being the sole occupant of a building, albeit a rather dilapidated one, for the promise of being an anchor tenant in a newly converted, post-industrial arts space. Since then, it has also had to negotiate the shift from being an anchor tenant to one of several resident companies, alongside Carriageworks' own curatorial team. This article undertakes a 'distant reading' of the dataset assembled under the auspices of AusStage, to analyse how this shift has changed Performance Space's programme, artists, audiences and aesthetics. Specifically, we identify three continuities: a deep and abiding commitment to liveness; an ongoing interest in interdisciplinary and intermedial art forms; and a home for independent dance. We also identify several differences, including: a decrease in the volume of programming and a narrowing of the types of performance and visual art on offer; a decline in the number of ensembles and a rise in live art; and a festivalisation of programming. Nonetheless, this cannot be attributed solely to the move, as the carriageworks era coincides with a period of major cuts to arts funding.' (Authors abstract) -
From Child Stars to Lost Theatres : Capturing Our Ephemeral History of Live Performance
2018
single work
column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 27 July 2018;'In 1825, Reverend Lancelot Threlkeld watched an Aboriginal Dance of Welcome at Newcastle’s East End Settlement. From the AusStage database - the research gateway to crucial information about live performance in Australia - we can learn it was held “in consequence of our coming among them”.' (Introduction)
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Data Models for Theatre Research : People, Places, and Performance
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Theatre Journal , December vol. 68 no. 4 2016; (p. 615-632)'How are theatre scholars sharing information about people, places, and performance? This essay considers the current prospects for collaborative research on theatre production within the context of recent developments in the digital humanities. It identifies convergence in the way that twelve projects around theworld are collecting and organizing information about performance: Abbey Theatre Archives Performance Database (Ireland); AusStage (Australia); Hamm Archives, Brooklyn Academy of Music (US); Global Performing Arts Database (US, Singapore, Japan, Russia, China); IbsenStage (Norway); Internet Broadway Database (US); Staging Beckett (England); Scottish Theatre Archive (Scotland); TheaterEncyclopedie (Netherlands); Theatre Aotearoa (New Zealand); Theatrescapes (Germany); and Toronto Theatre Database (Canada). The essay derives core descriptions for shared concepts from the data models in use, placing emphasis on practical solutions, while recognizing variations in implementation. In the process it distinguishes four levels of determination for concepts of performance, event, production, and work. Recognizing what has been achieved, the essay contributes to the prospects of sharing data among projects. It concludes by illustrating how visualizing information on performance opens new horizons of significance for theatre research at scales ranging from local activity to global networks.' (Publication summary)
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AusStage : Recording Australian Performing Arts Events
2004
single work
criticism
— Appears in: National Library of Australia News , January vol. 14 no. 4 2004; (p. 5-7) 'Richard Stone describes how the online index to Australia's performing arts history is helping to preserve a snapshot of society that would otherwise be lost forever' (National Library of Australia News, January 2004, p. 5) -
AusStage : e-Research in the Performing Arts
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , April no. 54 2009; (p. 178-194) -
Letter to a Dead Playwright: Daily Grind, Vicki Reynolds, and Archive Fever
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: New Theatre Quarterly , May vol. 28 no. 2 2012; (p. 122-132) 'Nothing is less reliable, nothing is less clear today than the word "archive",' observed Jacques Derrida in his book Archive Fever: a Freudian Impression (1996). This paper reflects on the unsettling process of establishing (or commencing) an archive for the Melbourne Workers Theatre, to form part of the AusStage digital archive which records information on live performance in Australia. Glenn D'Cruz's paper juxtaposes two disparate but connected registers of writing: an open letter to a deceased Australian playwright, Vicki Reynolds, and a critical reflection on the politics of the archive with reference to Derrida's account of archive fever, which he characterizes as an 'irrepressible desire to return to the origin, a homesickness, a nostalgia for the return to the most archaic place of absolute commencement'. Using Derrida's commentary on questions of memory, authority, inscription, hauntology, and heritage to identify some of the philosophical and ethical aporias he encountered while working on the project, D'Cruz pays particular attention to what Derrida calls the spectral structure of the archive, and stages a conversation with the ghosts that haunt the digitized Melbourne Workers Theatre documents. He also unpacks the logic of Derrida's so-called messianic account of the archive, which 'opens out of the future', thereby affirming the future-to-come, and unsettling the normative notion of the archive as a repository for what has passed.(Author's abstract) -
Mapping Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage : The Splinters Archive Project
2013
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , April no. 62 2013; (p. 113-129)'For a few dazzling years in the early 1990s, many eyes in the Australian theatre world were turning to Canberra. The centre of attention was a brash young company called Splinters, recommended to those of us then working at The Performance Space by the late Bruce Keller, who had been working in Canberra with theatre-in-education company Jigsaw. Splinters was arguably the most remarkable and influential, truly home-grown artistic venture that Canberra has produced. It grew from the local (counter-)culture, and arose in and around the national government, the cultural institutions and the embassies of many nations that the city was designed to serve. The company's meteoric rise to national prominence in the early 1990s has not, to date, been documented and shared with the community that nurtured it, and its astonishing works and techniques deserve to be made available for overdue critical analysis.' (Author's introduction)
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Data Models for Theatre Research : People, Places, and Performance
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Theatre Journal , December vol. 68 no. 4 2016; (p. 615-632)'How are theatre scholars sharing information about people, places, and performance? This essay considers the current prospects for collaborative research on theatre production within the context of recent developments in the digital humanities. It identifies convergence in the way that twelve projects around theworld are collecting and organizing information about performance: Abbey Theatre Archives Performance Database (Ireland); AusStage (Australia); Hamm Archives, Brooklyn Academy of Music (US); Global Performing Arts Database (US, Singapore, Japan, Russia, China); IbsenStage (Norway); Internet Broadway Database (US); Staging Beckett (England); Scottish Theatre Archive (Scotland); TheaterEncyclopedie (Netherlands); Theatre Aotearoa (New Zealand); Theatrescapes (Germany); and Toronto Theatre Database (Canada). The essay derives core descriptions for shared concepts from the data models in use, placing emphasis on practical solutions, while recognizing variations in implementation. In the process it distinguishes four levels of determination for concepts of performance, event, production, and work. Recognizing what has been achieved, the essay contributes to the prospects of sharing data among projects. It concludes by illustrating how visualizing information on performance opens new horizons of significance for theatre research at scales ranging from local activity to global networks.' (Publication summary)
