19thcenturyacts.com is a suite of tools designed to illuminate aspects of 19th century performance. It was created by an ever-expanding team of artists, computer programmers, historians, librarians and creative thinkers. We have been exploring how to make performance history lively and visual. You can enter and use the site in a variety of ways. Each section approaches a research question about the 19th Century from a different perspective.
The project points to wider issues of documenting under-represented performance histories in digital formats. In an age of prolific visual and audio imagery how are we to capture the performance dynamism of the 19th Century? Our methodology included organizing and training the computer-programming team while collaborating with a theatre class on reconstructing play excerpts and finally, integrating the collaborative work through team meetings.