News

Data Science Takes the Stage

My name is Quynh-Tran Le, and I am a Research Intern on the London Stage Database team. As a Data Science major, I come with a background in data processing, which I am using to help improve LSDB’s compatibility with other datasets. In particular, I have been focused on aligning London Stage records with the formats used by the new Transnational Stages project to compare performance cultures in other global cities of the eighteenth century. Data scientists work through multiple data sets to identify patterns, trends, and relationships between features, often using statistical modeling and analysis. These methods can also support the goals of researchers in humanities fields. Literary scholars analyze dramatic texts to understand the themes and styles of specific works using its textual data, while historians also use performance records to analyze the economics and audience demographics of a theater. Their research methodology usually involves closely reading individual... Read More

The World of the Beggar’s Opera

For the past two months, students in my advanced English courses have been collaborating on an interactive timeline designed to immerse readers in the world of John Gay’s musical comedy, The Beggar’s Opera, which premiered in 1728 and provided the blueprint for every West End musical since. Students in my literature class–“Viral Media in Eighteenth-Century London”–read and studied the play, visited our Library’s Special Collections to view rare materials from the period, and conducted original research into the politics, crime, censorship, celebrity, and scandal that swirled around the play’s premiere. They handed off their research to students in “Technologies and Texts: Digital Humanities Capstone,” who designed and implemented a digital storytelling experience as multi-modal and multi-layered as Gay’s smash hit. Both groups drew on LSDB in their work, although their research stretches far beyond the database and, indeed, beyond the eighteenth century. The timeline is embedded below, but for a better... Read More

Epilogue: #TheaterThursday

Last week marked the final curtain call for our beloved #TheaterThursday series, as its author Rose Ruhnke prepares to graduate from the University of Oregon and move on to new adventures. Fans of the series will be pleased to know that we have moved all of the posts to a dedicated gallery-style page, now reachable from the Theater Thursday link in our main navigation menu: Visit the new Theater Thursday gallery Awards for #TheaterThursday Perhaps I should say, beloved and award-winning series! That’s right–Rose received not one, but TWO formal commendations for her presentation on #TheaterThursday at UO’s Undergraduate Research Symposium last month: a Theater Arts Award, and an Honorable Mention for the English and Composition Award. One of the award committees praised Rose’s presentation as “well researched, impressively delivered, and exemplary of the values of the dissemination of new knowledge and creativity.” The rest of the LSDB team couldn’t agree more. Congratulations... Read More

June 4th, 1791: Curtains at Drury Lane

It is a bittersweet Thursday indeed; for today marks our final #theaterthursday ! While we may be mourning the end of #theaterthursday, we cannot help but simultaneously celebrate these past four months of London Stage history spotlights. It has been my joy and privilege to bring you all theater history events “on this day in history” for the past seventeen weeks. We’ve covered topics from stage rivalries and regulations, to Shakespearean forgeries, and beyond. I will be sad to see it end. We cannot forget, however, that the London Stage saw its fair share of curtain calls too… So, for one last time, on THIS day in London Stage history: Drury Lane Theatre, closed for the season and “for ever” !?! Well… not EXACTLY “for ever.”  View of the new front, towards Bridges Street, of the principal entry to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, la nouvelle façade, by Pastorini Begbie, 1776. Folger Imaging Department,... Read More

Downtime and improvements this week

The London Stage Database will be down for planned upgrades later today, Monday, June 1, starting at 3:00 p.m. Pacific time. We expect the outage to last no more than an hour. Once the site is back up and running, it will feature an updated database with significant improvements to the identification of dramatic Works and Witnesses associated with individual performances. This update builds on work we launched quietly last week: a new Drama corpus that brings together more than 900 printed plays and their metadata for large-scale text analysis. We’ll be sharing more about the corpus and the latest database improvements in some upcoming blog posts, but for now, you can check out the refreshed and expanded Data Downloads page on our website!

May 28th, 1689: A Royal Request Gone Wrong

Welcome back to our sixteenth #theaterthursday! Can you believe we’ve had so many weeks worth of London Stage event “on this day in history”? As the traditional theater season (which ran fall through spring) nears its end, so too does #theaterthursday, but today, beloved readers, is not that day! So (without further ado) on THIS day in London Stage history a royal request of the theaters… gone wrong: The year is 1689 and London is still in the wake of the Glorious Revolution. England saw their Catholic King, James II (brother and successor of Charles II), usurped by his own daughter, Mary, and her husband, William of Orange. In February, Mary officially became England’s monarch and the throne was returned to protestant (Anglican) hands. Only a few months after coronation, on this very day of May 28th, Mary made her first trip to the theater, but only after having made a very... Read More