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Article Excerpt
1. An Introduction to the Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project (CASP)
This essay presents an overview of some of the issues related to publishing the findings of a large-scale research project on Shakespeare, with an especial focus on Shakespearean adaptation in a particular national (Canadian) context, on the World Wide Web. Our purpose in writing the essay is to allow others thinking of undertaking large-scale, IT-based projects related to Shakespeare (or any other Humanities research for that matter that involves extensive database manipulation on the web) to understand and resolve some of the problems they will face: considerable energies would have been saved if we could have started out with the benefit of the experience we've gathered over first two years of the project and discussed in this essay. Hence, we have striven to be candid about some of the critical tussles that have resulted in what we feel to be a compelling (though still-to-be-perfected) model of IT-usage in the management of complex arrays of data related to a research project that undertakes to examine how Shakespearean adaptation in a Canadian context has played a key role not only in expanding the theatrical and dramaturgical possibilities inherent in Shakespeare's plays but in articulating specific forms of cultural identity that arise when Shakespeare is mediated via different forms of national self-fashioning. Second, and perhaps more selfishly, we have used the opportunity generated by this Special Issue of College Literature to re-evaluate our own working assumptions and outcomes, a necessary, ongoing, and sometimes discomfiting process by which one takes stock of a wide range of research activities in relation to desired project outcomes.
We cannot stress enough the importance of this self-critical mode of project evaluation. This importance is especially so in relation to IT-based projects where technological innovation, the jerry-rigging of extant software, and the ever-shifting possibilities of the creative deployment of web/IT-software in relation to research methodologies and the imagining of potential research outcomes, create possibilities that a research team such as ours must inevitably mediate and negotiate. (2) If anything, our experience has suggested that rigorous adherence to initial project conceptions would have been injudicious and severely limited potential research outcomes, despite the fact that the ongoing critical revaluation of the initial conceptions underlying the project has produced significant short-term increases in project-associated workloads.
The Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project (CASP) housed at the University of Guelph under the direction of Daniel Fischlin is a multi-year investigation of the ways in which Shakespearean influences permeate the cultures of theatrical representation in Canada. Initially and perhaps somewhat naively, the project was conceptualized in primarily literary and historical terms with typical project outcomes projected--a critical book, an anthology for use in pedagogy, a CD-ROM of relevant archival materials, and a comprehensive bibliography. Language from the grant application itself shows the kind of parameters initially imagined for the project:
Despite Canada's increasing prominence in the theatrical world as a place where Shakespeare is performed and adapted in a variety of contexts, little scholarship exists that details the ways in which Shakespeare has been adapted over the last several hundred years. The purpose of the proposed research is to gather the archival materials related to Shakespearean production and adaptation in Canada in a central archive. The archive would be housed with the largest theatrical archive in the country at the University of Guelph and would be a crucial element in helping define key elements in Canadian theatrical history, the dissemination of Shakespearean influence, and the relationship between theatrical culture and the formation of national identity. No other archive of this sort exists in the country and ... I would note that the project I'm requesting funding for involves the building of the archive virtually from scratch.
The proposed research activity is to embark on a comprehensive search of important theatre archives across the country (including the significant holdings here at the University of Guelph and the archives associated with virtually all the theatre companies in Canada) in which these adaptations are to be found. Also, a detailed archive of secondary, critical works will be produced in relation to the project that will gather audio-visual materials, authorial and biographical information, review and staging information, information pertaining to theatrical companies throughout Canada (large and small), and secondary scholarship. This information will be organized on a play-by-play, author-by-author basis into a searchable database as well as into files that will eventually be deposited in a major library holding (either here at the University of Guelph or at the National Library. ... The impact of the proposed program of research on the community will be significant in a number of ways: the archive will be an indispensable resource for scholars and pedagogues and will become the crucial source for information pertaining to Canadian theatrical history generally, adaptations of Shakespeare in Canada across its many regions and communities, and to scholars, performers, playwrights, dramaturges, and teachers seeking specific information about the long history of Shakespearean production in Canada.
Additionally, the archive will allow for the study of the use of adaptation, performance, staging and other theatrical and literary activities to reinforce and consolidate national identity. Finally, a third expected outcome would be the production of an archive of plays that reflects upon the enormous diversity and creativity that has historically contributed to the fashioning of Canada, one that allows for study and comment upon the ways in which the history of the arts in Canada has played a crucial role in the formation of core community values apparently definitive of a Canadian national identity. Inevitably, such an archive would allow for the study of theatrical adaptation in the contexts of Shakespeare studies in a specifically Canadian national context (including understanding the role of such prominent cultural landmarks as the work of Northrop Frye, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Stratford Festival, and a burgeoning multiculturalism) and allow for study of the prominent role of Shakespearean theatre in constituting various Canadian identities. (Fischlin 1999)
The project, however, quickly mutated into something quite different. This mutation was necessitated by the initial research, which produced a startling and somewhat unexpected result: preliminary research in the grant-writing phase of the project had identified what seemed to be a manageable archive of texts in the range of fifty to one hundred play scripts that actually met the then fairly rigid notion of adaptation that was being used to articulate the project. This manageable archive quickly transformed itself into a many-headed Hydra once initial funding provided for more detailed searches of relevant archives, including the theatre archives housed at the University of Guelph and currently the largest and most important such collection in Canada. By the end of the first year into the project, the number of confirmed plays had doubled, with an extensive "new leads" list that numbered in the thousands. (3)
The realization that the project was likely to produce an unprecedented archive of texts numbering well beyond the initial expectations prompted a wholesale rethinking of the project's research methodologies, especially in relation to dissemination outcomes. First assumptions had been that commercially available software of the EndNote variety would suffice for keeping track of the relevant bibliographical, theatrical production, and authorial data the project intended to collect. In fact, from the start the assumption was that each play would have a hard-copy office file that would gather play script (including draft work where this was available), authorial information, production information and materials, secondary reference information, ongoing correspondence necessitated by research on the file, and a range of other materials including interview materials, multimedia (visual and audio materials), theatre programs and other performance-related materials. The entire archive would thus be based on hard-copy materials (eventually destined for the theatre archives at the University of Guelph) that would become available to scholars working out of that archive. As a conjunct to the hard copy of the archive, initial project planning suggested that an indexical/bibliographic-type program (like EndNote) might be appropriate for keeping track of project materials in a relatively searchable application that would give researchers a quick shorthand guide to the contents of the archive. (And, in fact, much of the early data gathered by the research team ended up archived on a customized EndNote database.)
When it became apparent that the dimensions of the archives were going to be significantly larger than initially thought, it became immediately clear that initial conceptions round the IT-dimensions of the project had to change dramatically. Furthermore, prompted by early negotiations with Oxford University Press over the possibility of doing a teaching anthology based on the research (and the possible formats in which that anthology might be disseminated), we recognized that neither traditional text nor CD-ROM versions of an anthology would provide the kind of flexibility of access and range of material that was envisioned as being truly compatible with the pedagogical needs of various levels of pre-university, undergraduate, and graduate education. This lack was especially evident after the 2002 publication of Adaptations of Shakespeare: A Critical Anthology of Plays from the 17th Century to the Present, co-edited by Fischlin and Mark Fortier. The book--the first to anthologize a range of Shakespearean adaptations from Shakespeare's own time through to the present and produced in several national contexts--had been born of a series of compromises necessitated by financial, copyright, and market exigencies. As a way of addressing key issues around accessibility to a range of teaching play-texts, Routledge and the co-editors produced a web page linked to the book to facilitate alternatives to the plays printed in the book. This relatively primitive use of the web effectively allowed the book to be used as an open-ended basis for course designs through the list of "Further Adaptations" provided on the website (http://www.routledge.com/routledge/shakespeare/adaptations.html).
Though far from ideal, the compromise, in tandem with the signals received from the Oxford editorial team, led to the imagining of a truly open-ended text resource fully linked to a database in which one could quickly derive relevant information, whether as a student, teacher, scholar, performer, director, or writer. Further, it became apparent that the possibilities of the web permitted a less market-driven approach to published information (as necessarily occurred with the Routledge anthology) and less of a fixed sense of text limited by the costs of producing books in first, second, and later editions. Using the web as the primary means of dissemination meant that it was possible to conceive of, for example, an Online Anthology that could ostensibly keep growing as the archives grew (and as copyright issues were resolved for those plays not in the public domain). And indeed at the time of this writing the Online Anthology has grown from an initial 37 plays to well over fifty plays supplemented by critical tools that include introductory essays, related multimedia documentation, embedded hyperlinks to related materials, author...
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