About AusStage > Project History

In 1999, at the instigation of the Australasian Drama Studies Association (ADSA), theatre scholars from eight Australian universities, together with other organisations such as the Australia Council, PASIG (Performing Arts Special Interest Group) and industry representative, Playbox Theatre, combined to commence a project to index performing arts events in Australia, and to develop a directory of research resources on the performing arts.

The aim was to establish a national electronic database of theatre research, bringing together many existing resources (from within the participating universities and other theatre research organisations) and catering for future data collection and collaborative research.

AusStage addressed several major deficiencies in Australian theatre studies. One of these is a comprehensive listing of live theatre events since white settlement as raw material for its studies, a second a comprehensive listing of places such as museums and libraries were source material may be found. AusStage aimed to provide hardware and software that can handle complex relational queries and that will ultimately unite extensive data that covers three strands of theatre research with important social and cultural implications;

• theatre history; 
• the cultural and commercial analysis of the production and consumption of performances; and 
• audience analysis.

Funding was sought and obtained from the ARC (Australian Research Council) through its Research Infrastructure and Equipment Fund. This grant was augmented by further contributions from all eight participating universities. Serious work began in January 2000 and the first phase of this project was completed by the end of 2002. It resulted in a prototype data model with enough data to ensure its efficacy and allowed us to apply for funding for ongoing development.  

We obtained funding for phase 2 from the ARC in 2003 and was carried out with the support of the same partners as for phase 1. In early 2004 this partnership was extended by the inclusion of Curtin University, WA. As part of this phase the database was substantially re-organised, interfaces were greatly improved and various other elements were added. Also the number of records saw a substantial increase. Phase 2 was completed in the course of 2004.

In 2006 AusStage expanded its partnership to 22 organisations and in 2007 the consortium received a third round of fudning from the ARC's Linkage Infrastructure Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) scheme. The objectives for AusStage in Phase 3 are to:

1. create a national network in partnership with government and industry for sustainable data entry
2. build links with digital sources in online repositories and pioneer strategies for digitising live performance data
3. cultivate e-research capacity by developing the interactive potential of AusStage and pioneering new e-research methodologies