The London Stage Database

FAIN: HAA-258717-18

Utah State University (Logan, UT 84322-1400)
Mattie Burkert (Project Director: June 2017 to March 2021)
Katie Dana (Co Project Director: March 2018 to May 2019)

The recovery and revitalization of a unique and important database, supported by NEH and other funders in the 1970s, containing information on theater and popular culture in London in the long eighteenth century (1660-1800).

Obsolescence is a serious issue facing the digital humanities today. Projects can take years to complete, by which time the data and software are out of step with current platforms and file formats. We propose to recover an NEH-funded humanities computing project completed in the 1970s: the London Stage Information Bank. In addition to revitalizing and making available a database of great interest to scholars of eighteenth-century British culture, this project will address three broader goals: (1) model best practices for recovering obsolete digital projects; (2) make visible the Information Bank’s underlying assumptions about the nature of the data itself, fostering awareness of the theoretical underpinnings of humanities databases used today that were begun in the early decades of humanities computing; and (3) create a platform that can interface with other digitization and data collection projects now underway, enabling the future growth of a network of related databases and tools.

Media Coverage

"The Bard's Ascent: When Was Greatness Thrust upon William Shakespeare?" (Media Coverage)
Author(s): James Tozer
Publication: The Economist
Date: 10/26/2019
Abstract: This article analyzes data from the London Stage Database to track the 18th-century growth in Shakespeare's popularity. Trends in the performances of specific plays during that period are compared with current-day trends, as reflected in UK Theatre Web. The article features several graphics created using the full JSON dataset downloaded from the London Stage Database website.
URL: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/10/26/when-was-greatness-thrust-upon-william-shakespeare

Review of the London Stage Database (Review)
Author(s): Fiona Ritchie
Publication: ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
Date: 11/2/2020
Abstract: The London Stage Database is an open-access and open-source website that digitises the performance records contained in the print volumes of the London Stage, published in the 1960s. The database's flexible search function and intuitive interface open up new directions in research and will change the way we think about eighteenth-century theatre.
URL: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/abo/vol10/iss2/3/

Burkert, Mattie, principal investigator and project dir. The London Stage Database. (Review)
Author(s): Renae Satterley
Publication: Renaissance and Reformation
Date: 10/22/2021
Abstract: Review of the London Stage Database appearing in the journal's "Digital Resource Reviews" section.
URL: https://doi.org/10.33137/rr.v44i1.37061

Review: London Stage Database (Review)
Author(s): Kalle Westerling
Publication: Reviews in Digital Humanities
Date: 9/29/2022
Abstract: A review of London Stage Database, a digital project that remediates the London Stage Information Book, directed by Mattie Burkert
URL: https://reviewsindh.pubpub.org/pub/london-stage-database/release/2

Data is Plural Visualization Challenge (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Jeremy Singer-Vine
Publication: Nightingale Magazine
Date: 8/26/2022
Abstract: The Challenge: We’re a community of data visualizers, so let’s do what we do best— visualize data! Explore the selected dataset, find an interesting angle or insight, and create a visualization using the tool of your choice. Infographics, data stories, data art… you have permission to get creative. About the dataset, from Jeremy Singer-Vine: I’ve chosen the London Stage Database as the source for Nightingale’s inaugural dataset challenge. I first encountered the dataset a couple of years ago and it continues to impress me. The material itself is compelling, of course: it describes 100,000+ performances at 50,000+ theatrical events in London from 1660 to 1880, often supplemented with detailed notes and cast lists. But the project, led by the University of Oregon’s Mattie Burkert, is also a great example of making data usable for others.
URL: https://nightingaledvs.com/data-is-plural-visualization-challenge/

Data is Plural Submissions: The London Stage Database (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Iva Brunec, Michiel Duvekot, Kat Greenbrook, Milán Janosov, Georgios Karamanis, Lee Olney, Lisa Pederson, Nikita Rokotyan, Guillermina Sutter Schneider, Nightingale Editors
Publication: Nightingale Magazine
Date: 12/22/2022
Abstract: The inaugural Data Is Plural visualization challenge prompted readers to explore the London Stage Database, which describes 100,000+ performances in London from 1660 to 1880. Check out the submissions.
URL: https://nightingaledvs.com/data-is-plural-submissions-london-stage-database/

S1E2: The London Stage (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Jeremy Singer-Vine
Publication: Data is Plural: The Podcast
Date: 3/29/2023
Abstract: This episode’s guest is Mattie Burkert, whose London Stage Database was featured in the Aug. 14, 2019 edition of the Data Is Plural newsletter. Mattie sets the scene for 17th- and 18th-century theater performances, describes those performances’ eventful journey into bits and bytes, how the digital records were almost lost to history, and how she and collaborators recovered them.
URL: https://podcast.data-is-plural.com/2159594/12535551

How to Find Your Actor Ancestors (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Celia Heritage
Publication: Who Do You Think You Are?
Date: 7/27/2021
Abstract: A diverse range of online resources can help you research the thespians in your family tree.
URL: https://www.pressreader.com/uk/who-do-you-think-you-are-magazine/20210727/282561611185278

Top Resources for Tracing Your Theatre Ancestors (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Michelle J. Holman
Publication: Family Tree
Date: 9/24/2019
URL: https://www.family-tree.co.uk/useful-genealogy-websites/top-resources-for-tracing-your-theatre-ancestors/

Associated Products

London Stage Database (Web Resource)
Title: London Stage Database
Author: Mattie Burkert
Author: Todd Hugie
Author: Dustin Olson
Abstract: The London Stage Database website provides access to information about over 52,000 performance events documented in London between 1660 and 1800, based on the reference book The London Stage, 1660-1800 published in the 1960s, as well as a recovery of the related London Stage Information Bank developed in the 1970s. Users can search for specific actors, theaters, play titles, playwrights, and more, or they can download part or all of the data to conduct exploratory analyses. The user interface is designed to make the rich history of this data, as well as its many limitations, intuitively clear to those who interact with the site.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://londonstagedatabase.uoregon.edu
Primary URL Description: Landing page and keyword search for the London Stage Database website.
Secondary URL: https://londonstagedatabase.usu.edu
Secondary URL Description: Original URL for the London Stage Database, which will redirect to the new site.

London Stage Database - Database Code (Computer Program)
Title: London Stage Database - Database Code
Author: Todd Hugie
Author: Dustin Olson
Author: Derek Miller
Author: Mattie Burkert
Abstract: Code for cleaning, parsing, modifying, and loading data into the database. Versioned and repositoried in 2022.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://github.com/LondonStageDB/database-code/releases/tag/v1.0
Secondary URL: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7328443
Access Model: Open Access
Programming Language/Platform: Python
Source Available?: Yes

London Stage Database - Website Code (Computer Program)
Title: London Stage Database - Website Code
Author: Dustin Olson
Author: Cameron Seright
Author: John Zhao
Author: Daniel Mundra
Author: Mattie Burkert
Abstract: This repository includes all the files needed to replicate the London Stage Database website on your server. Versioned and repositoried in 2022.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://github.com/LondonStageDB/website/tree/v2.1
Secondary URL: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7328436
Access Model: Open access
Programming Language/Platform: PHP
Source Available?: Yes

The London Stage Database (Database/Archive/Digital Edition)
Title: The London Stage Database
Author: Mattie Burkert
Author: Will Daland
Author: Emma Hallock
Author: Todd Hugie
Author: Lauren Liebe
Author: Derek Miller
Author: Dustin Olson
Author: Ben R. Schneider, Jr.
Abstract: Recovered files, and documents and archival data used to revitalize the London Stage Information Bank, which was completed in the 1970s but had become technologically obsolete.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/all_datasets/77/
Secondary URL: https://doi.org/10.26078/0S6R-8E27
Access Model: Open access

London Stage Database - Data (Database/Archive/Digital Edition)
Title: London Stage Database - Data
Author: Todd Hugie
Author: Dustin Olson
Author: Mattie Burkert
Author: Emma Hallock
Author: Lauren Liebe
Author: Derek Miller
Abstract: Data for the London Stage Database, versioned and repositoried in 2022.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://github.com/LondonStageDB/data/tree/v1.0
Secondary URL: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7328445
Access Model: Open access

From Manual to Digital: Women’s Hands and the Work of Eighteenth-Century Studies (Article)
Title: From Manual to Digital: Women’s Hands and the Work of Eighteenth-Century Studies
Author: Mattie Burkert
Abstract: Digital resources like the HathiTrust Digital Library, Early English Books Online, and Eighteenth-Century Collections Online are increasingly central to humanities scholarship, a trend that has only accelerated as academic jobs disappear, institutional budgets tighten, and an ongoing global pandemic limits travel and access to archives. These electronic resources are not simply a panacea in precarious times, however; they are the product of a global information economy that depends on uncredited, invisible, and underpaid labor. The academic humanities are complicit in exploiting and erasing these technology workers, as a growing body of investigative research has shown. This essay contributes a new case study of an offshore outsourcing project commissioned by and for eighteenth-century scholars: the digitization of The London Stage, 1660–1800 by China Data Systems Corporation in 1970. That electronic transcription, which continues to underpin the present-day London Stage Database, was performed by women keypunchers whose labor was systematically feminized, racialized, and devalued in advertisements and corporate media. Drawing connections to the rhetoric around projects like Google Books and the Text Creation Partnership today, I highlight the recurrent figure of the hand and its vexed role in policing the boundaries between agential and alienated labor. Turning to the period that gave rise to contemporary understandings of intellectual property, I conclude by examining a receipt recording three copyright sales between Susanna Centlivre and Edmund Curll. In this ephemeral manuscript, I find a story richly suggestive of how we might reimagine scholarly labor and knowledge work in our moment of technocapitalism.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.1353/sec.2023.0036
Primary URL Description: Offprint of published article via Project Muse (subscription required)
Secondary URL: https://mattieburkert.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/burkert_secc_final-ms_website.pdf
Secondary URL Description: Preprint hosted on author website in accordance with publishing contract.
Access Model: Subscription only, with preprint available in open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Nobodies and Somebodies: Embodying Precarity on the Early Modern English Stage (Article)
Title: Nobodies and Somebodies: Embodying Precarity on the Early Modern English Stage
Author: Mattie Burkert
Abstract: This essay traces popular characters named “Nobody” and “Somebody” across the theatrical culture of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England, beginning with the anonymous play Nobody and Somebody (1606) and moving through Henry Fielding’s The Author’s Farce (1730) to a series of prologues and epilogues performed throughout the 1740s and 1750s. I argue that this performance tradition encoded a critique of the ways credit culture abstracted identity, deferred agency, and replaced face-to-face social obligations with impersonal debt structures. The Nobody and Somebody phenomenon therefore offers a window onto early modern conceptualizations of precarity, as defined by Lauren Berlant: the interplay between the universal, existential vulnerability of being human and the specific instabilities and cruelties of life under capitalism. Ultimately, these figures reveal the power of the stage—a site that privileges embodiment, sensory experience, and material presence—to critique an economic system that insistently abstracts human life. This article draws heavily on the London Stage Database as a source of research data and includes a detailed appendix collating the records in the database with other sources of evidence about a specific performance tradition.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0040557422000072
Primary URL Description: Article offprint via Cambridge Core (subscription required)
Secondary URL: https://mattieburkert.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/burkert-theatresurvey-preprint.pdf
Secondary URL Description: Pre-print hosted on author website in accordance with publishing contract
Access Model: Offprint: subscription only; preprint: open access via author website
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Theatre Survey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

---