update on the Atlantic Canada Theatre Site (ACTS)

[Edward Mullaly]

With the academic year winding down (or so rumour has it), people might
begin to find time to work on their own theatre research projects. With this
in mind, I thought I might take a moment to bring you up to date on what's
new on the Atlantic Canada Theatre Site (ACTS).
http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/Theatre/index.html 

1. Bibliography

     -- John Ball's most recent work has been added to the site. This means
that all of the original Ball & Plant volume, plus the annual updates, is
now published in one electronic search engine of over 16,000 entries on
http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/Theatre/Bib/ 

     --  A new database has been added: "A Preliminary Bibliography and
Database of Canadian Theatre Reviews 1900 - 1992" is a bibliography of over
20,000 newspaper citations of articles by Canadian theatre reviewers. It has
taken a couple of years to recode the original research results into a
workable, electronic database. But the citations are there and searchable.
Unfortunately, the actual articles were not part of the original project.


2. Playbills http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/Theatre/Posters/ 

     Thanks to a SSHRC grant a couple of years back, this section contains
scanned images of 19th century playbills not only from New Brunswick
collections, but also the playbills of Atlantic Canada from the Harvard
Theatre Collection. Most recently, I was able to add the HTC's 550 19th
century playbills of Maine to the electronic data base. This provides a
rather rich context of the structure of individual seasons in the maritimes
and a documentation of the touring repertoire of many companies. Again, this
data base of well over a thousand playbills is searchable by production,
date, city and/or actor.


3. Performance Calendars
http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/Theatre/Calendars/search.html 

     -- ACTS was born out of frustration with having to find an unused
microfiche reader to research Mary Smith's exhaustive performance calendar
of 19th century theatre in Saint John. So she allowed her performance
calendar to be keyboarded into a search engine, along with my own material
on Fredericton, and other performance research on different centres in New
Brunswick. Since then, much more maritime material has been added to the
search engine. Particularly the voluminous and on-going research by Patrick
O'Neill into theatre in Halifax (which is now up to circa 1840). And Denyse
Lynde's exhaustive research on 19th century theatre in St. John's, via the
Newfoundland newspapers.

     --  Somewhere along the line, I noticed that the performance history of
much more recent professional theatre in New Brunswick, Halifax, and
Charlottetown was falling by the wayside. Again thanks to SSHRC, I was able
to assemble performance calendars for Theatre New Brunswick, Neptune
Theatre, and Confederation Centre stretching from their origins almost half
a century ago to the present day. I've included posters from TNB
productions, as these were starting to disappear. My grants ran out before
we could scan the posters for Neptune and the Confed Centre. But if anyone
wants to research the performance history of these three companies either
individually or collectively, or follow the maritime careers of particular
actors over the last half century, the search engine is here.


4. Theatre Research in Canada http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/TRIC/ 

     -- As you've probably discovered, all issues of the journal are on
line. Most are freely available. All are available to subscribers.


5.  Theatre Chronology http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/Theatre/Timeline/ 

     -- This is an 'ongoing' project. The idea is that a researcher might
want to get a snapshot of what was happening in Canadian theatre across
Canada in, say, 1882. Thanks to contributors in many provinces we have
created a search engine which searches across provinces (or just within a
province, should you wish) by date or topic. I haven't found a volunteer to
'do' British Columbia, Quebec, Nova Scotia, or PEI. This is a rather modest
chronology. But it does extend across the 19th century 'from sea to sea' and
touches the high points of theatre in the included provinces.



6.  Drama texts http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/Theatre/Texts/ 

     --  If you're looking for textual material - prologues, epilogues,
satirical scripts, reviews, etc - that might have found their way into 19th
century maritime newspapers, this is a good place to start your search.

     --  This section also provides a home for the tremendous amount of
material Anton Wagner has amassed concerning Herman Voaden. If it exists,
Anton has provided the text of it here in the Herman Voaden archive.
Published plays. Unpublished scripts. Published and unpublished critical
works. Production photographs. And pretty well everything published on
Herman Voaden. Not simply references, but the complete works. His research
provides a model for anyone thinking of publishing an electronic base for
other Canadian playwrights, actors, etc.



The goal driving work on ACTS has been to transfer over to a readily usable
electronic format the results of major research projects of recent decades.
And also to provide a home to recent and/or ongoing projects that benefit
from being published electronically, freely and world-wide on the Internet.
Many generous researchers have agreed to make their work available in this
format. The technical work and electronic coding that exists behind the data
appearing on your monitor, in the creation of searchable data bases, is
state of the art.  I hope that researchers continue to feel free to contact
me about projects, present or past, that they feel should have a home here.
The site provides a ready and instant entry into Canadian theatre for
anyone, anywhere in the world.

Enjoy.




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Edmund: Half of them [Scots] can't even speak English. 
Baldrick: What do they speak? 
Edmund: I don't know - it's all Greek to me. 
Percy: They speak Greek? 
Edmund: No, I mean it sounds like Greek. 
Percy: Well, if sounds like Greek, it probably is Greek. 
Edmund: It's not Greek! 
Percy: ...but it sounds like Greek. "What's not Greek 
      but sounds like Greek?" That's a good one, My Lord! 
Edmund: Look, it's not meant to be a brainteaser, Percy! 
        I'm simple telling you that I cannot understand a 
        blind word they're saying! 
Percy: Well, no wonder, My Lord -- you never learned 
      Greek, of course. 
                                                 -- Black Adder

Edward Mullaly,                        
511 Mansfield St,
Fredericton, NB   E3B 3A1
(506) 454-3463