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Computers and Theatre Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

Edward Mullaly
Edward Mullaly
Affiliation:
Professor of English at theUniversity of New Brunswick
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Extract

In the Presidential Address to the American Society for Theatre Research in 1981, Joseph Donohue cast his eye toward the future of theatre scholarship and the advent of computer technology. His exhortation that scholars must make friends with and make use of the microchip was based on syllogistic reasoning: since scholarly analysis includes the ordering of data into “clear, pertinent and discrete” patterns, and since the computer is the obvious tool for the storage and reordering of such data, therefore “a compelling need exists for greater computer literacy in the humanities.”

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , May 1987 , pp. 59 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1987

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References

NOTES

1 Donohue, Joseph, “Theatre Scholarship and Technology: A Look at the Future of the Discipline,” Theatre Survey 22. no. 2 (November 1981): 133–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Ibid., 139.

3 Ibid., 137.

4 This article focuses on the computer's potential for the theatre historian. Articles dealing with the computer's usefulness as an aid in complex textual analysis or as a tool for exploring human interaction with the literary text include Bender, Todd K., “Literary Texts in Electronic Storage: The Editorial Potential,” Computers and the Humanities 10 (July-August 1976): 193–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Wittig, Susan, “The Computer and the Concept of Text,” Computers and the Humanities 11 (July-August 1977): 211–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 The computers and programs mentioned throughout this article are falling quickly by the wayside as newer technology takes over. The Apple 11+ is almost a museum piece now, supplanted by various new breeds of Apples. The IBM machines have left the 8086 microprocessor behind, and are moving on from the second generation 286 chip to the faster and potentially more useful third generation chip, the 386. For the foreseeable future, the key element in choosing a data base program will be its ability to handle Structured Query Language (or SQL). Data bases using SQL (some have appeared recently, others - such as the promised dBase IV-ate to appear in 1988) will be able to talk much more directly to IBM mainframes and also to each other. The Extended Edition (more expensive and memory-demanding) of IBM's 0S2 will shortly provide SQL built into its operating system. But even the old Apple 11+ will still prove useful, if one can find a file management program to use with it.

6 Henderson, Michael M.T., “Microcomputers and Large Data Bases,” Computers and the Humanities 16 (November-December 1982): 221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This article describes the year-long effort involved in transferring a large data base project from a main frame computer to floppy disks.