A
DIGITAL JOURNEY THROUGH IRISH THEATRE
Abbey Theatre and NUI Galway Digital Archive Partnership
Abbey Theatre and NUI Galway Digital Archive Partnership
About
the Abbey Theatre
·
Ireland’s
National Theatre was founded by W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory in 1904.
·
Since
its inception, the Abbey has played a key role in establishing who we are as a
nation – by challenging, questioning and celebrating Irish-ness and Ireland.
·
The
Abbey was founded to ‘bring upon the stage the deeper emotions of Ireland’.
Today our mission is to create world-class theatre that reflects Irish life.
·
The
Abbey has produced work by all four of Ireland’s Nobel laureates, premiering
new plays by Yeats, Shaw and Heaney, while also producing several of Beckett’s
works.
·
Over
the past century :
Ø
616
playwrights have worked with the Abbey Theatre
Ø
Over
3,914 actors have thread the boards
Ø
70,000
characters have been brought to life
Ø
1,455
plays have been staged
Ø
600
costume and set designers have worked at the Abbey Theatre
About
NUI Galway
·
NUI
Galway has internationally-recognised research expertise in digital humanities
and in Irish Theatre.
·
NUI
Galway is home to an impressive collection of internationally significant
archives in the fields of history, politics, theatre and literature.
·
The
Archive Collection at the University’s James Hardiman Library comprises over
350 collections, dating from 1485 to the present.
About
the abbey Archive
·
The
Abbey Archive contains over 1.8 million items including:
Ø Master programmes for
over 4,300 productions
Ø Over 28,000 Press
Cuttings
Ø Video recordings of 430
productions
Ø More than 6,000 scripts
Ø 600 Production posters
Ø 1,000 Production
handbills
Ø Over 16,000 photograph
prints
Ø 600 Music Scores
Ø Over 2,600 hours of
audio files from the productions
Ø 6,000 pages of Minute
Books
Ø An extensive collection
of costume and set designs
All forming part of
the largest digitised theatre archive in the world.
About the Digitisation
Project
·
The largest theatre digitisation project ever undertaken
·
133
years of Irish theatre, history, culture and society preserved for future
generations (1904-2037)
·
Researchers, archivists and librarians at NUI Galway are
applying the most advanced digital technology to Ireland’s most historic
theatre archive to create a rich online collection.
·
It will take three years to digitise, with an estimated
completion date of September 2015.
·
Digitisation of this historic Abbey Archive commenced on 4th
of September, 2012, in the James Hardiman Library on the NUI Galway campus.
·
The first phase of digital material will be available to
researchers from September 2013, including collections of Master Programmes for 4,300
productions, video recordings of 430 productions, Audio Cues, Minute Books,
Stage and Lighting Designs, Administrative Records and Logbooks of plays
received by the Abbey.
·
New
PhD students will be recruited and funded annually to undertake research on the
digitized archive at NUI Galway.
·
Many
more researchers and students will visit NUI Galway to view the digital
Archive, while original documents will continue to be available to view at the
Abbey Theatre.
·
It
is envisaged that by 2020, the archive will have generated a substantial number
of scholarly books and articles, public exhibitions, public lectures,
documentaries, and new digital teaching and research resources.
·
The
Archive Collection at the University’s James Hardiman Library comprises over
350 collections, dating from 1485 to the present. Theatre collections include
the papers of Thomas Kilroy and the Shields Family Collection and there is a particular focus on the archives of companies such as the Druid
Theatre, Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe and the Lyric Players Theatre in Belfast
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