General:Mapping Theatrical Relationships

From CWRC

Revision as of 17:17, 6 November 2009 by DorothyHadfield (Talk | contribs)

Contents

User Story Creator Identification

This is optional. Provide if you are comfortable doing so.

Name: D.A. Hadfield

Email: dhadfiel@uoguelph.ca

Tell us something about your level of study and the type of institutional appointment you hold. 
Choose any of the terms below that apply to you:
* undergrad
* grad
* part-time instructor
* pre-tenure faculty member
* tenured faculty member
* archivist-librarian
* independent scholar
* creative practitioner
* interested citizen

Role: part-time instructor

Institution: University of Guelph

Field of Study/Creative Endeavor: theatre historiography, literary production, contemporary Canadian & 19th C British theatre

Self-description

Please write a paragraph about your persona as a researcher: your position, your discipline, your general research interests, 
and the extent to which you use computers in your research. 
You may wish to mention particular tools that you use with some regularity.

I am a sessional instructor at University of Guelph and St. Jerome's University (Waterloo), where I've taught pretty much everything from the medieval lyric to contemporary drama. My main research focus is in theatre historiography, especially feminist theatre. In practical terms, I'm interested in investigating the material conditions in which theatre is produced, and what effect they have both on the production of the theatrical event itself and on the way it is subsequently preserved and valued. On frequent occasions, this net has widened to consider non-theatrical literary production as well.

Project

Please provide a short description of the larger project from which this story emerges.

My current research project involves women playwrights of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, specifically those who had some kind of relationship with George Bernard Shaw. Shaw has been historically positioned as the predominant playwright of “The Woman Question” and its subsequent reimaginings through suffragette and feminist drama, a position buoyed by his extra-theatrical involvement in women’s rights issues. So, despite his oft-quoted insistence that he would not speak for women because women were more than capable of speaking for themselves, Shaw’s voice is the one that history has preserved to speak about women’s dramatic representations. At its most basic, the project began in wondering why that was.



Story

I would like to be able to trace Shaw’s lines of influence in the theatre to determine how he managed to dominate the women playwright’s voices so effectively. My previous research into theatre historiography made me acutely aware that the most important and relevant historical materials are those that dramatic (and literary) history rarely focuses on: personal relationships, availability of performers or venues, and financial negotiations that had at least as much—and sometimes more—influence on what appeared on stage than considerations of artistic merit, but which “history” nonetheless turns into confirmation of the unique or exemplary worth of these works. For this project, I’d like to investigate Shaw’s personal relationships or contacts with theatrical women to determine the extent to which his influence may have helped or hindered their work. In order to assess the extent of Shaw’s influence on female playwrights, it’s also necessary to consider women who may have tried to come at playwriting from acting (or other writing genres) but were discouraged or blocked in the attempt by Shaw.

First, I create the timeline that identifies women who were involved in theatre as playwrights and/or actresses in London during the particular time period of 1890-1925 (the period around Shaw’s most prolific theatrical activity). Ideally, this timeline should also be able to identify play productions by title, duration of the run, producing venue, and publication. I would then map Shaw’s presence into that network through various entry points. For example, I would like to be able to link to Shaw’s reviews of a playwright’s plays and see whether his assessment of the play had any effect on her future output or production opportunities. I'd also like to be able to link directly to the texts of these plays to assess how accurately Shaw is representing it. Or, I would like to focus on particular theatrical venues or publishing houses to see if Shaw’s involvement with them had any effect on the production or publication opportunities for women playwrights. Especially, I’d like to be able to map any personal relationships he had with women in the theatre and what kinds of “encouragement” he might have offered them. For much of this research, it would be necessary to consult volumes of correspondence or memoirs—material that I would love to be able to access directly from Orlando, but won’t be able to in most cases because of copyright restrictions.

Something that would be really exciting would be to create a visual representation of these relationships and determine whether there are any identifiable clusters and whether these have any relationship (positive or negative) to the women’s historical visibility.


How broadly do the practices described in this story apply to others in same field, in related fields, etc?
* broadly applicable
* shared by some
* shared by few or none

Scope: These practices would be shared by anyone with a materialist focus in theatre history.


Does your story describe current research activities that you think CWRC will enhance (present), 
or future research possibilities that you can only dream of now? (future)

Timeline: Some of this research (eg. parts of building the timeline) can already be done by Orlando; other aspects (identifying production details, linking to external materials) can as yet only be dreamed of.


Please provide some keywords that will allow us to group or cluster related stories--or aspects of stories. 
Use as many of the ones listed below as relevant or provide your own.
* Aggregate
* Annotate
* Consider
* Discover
* Interact
* Publish
* Archive/Preserve
* Share
* Visualize
* Map
* Historicize
* Edit
* Network
* Collaborate
* Integrated History of Women's Writing in Canada
* Orlando

Keywords: Aggregate, Consider, Discover, Archive/Preserve, Visualize, Map, Historicize


Are there parts of the story that relate to other CWRC stories? 
Please provide title(s) and link to the relevant story page.

Related Stories: Story:VisualizingSocialNetworks


Are there tools that do some of the sorts of things you'd like to see in CWRC? 
If so, what are they?

Related Tools: Internet Archive