Web Projects
The REED Patrons and Performances Web Site
Professional performers of all kinds in England and Wales toured to provincial towns, monasteries and private residences before 1642. The REED Patrons and Performances Web Site includes a wide range of data about professional performers on tour in the provinces – their patrons, the performance venues they used and the routes they took across the kingdom.
Data relating to 27 REED collections have been uploaded to date, linked with an interactive map to illustrate the medieval and renaissance routes performers followed across the kingdom. As well as directing the work of a gifted development team, I contributed the historical geographic research for mapping the routes and the new content for performance venues in 19 counties and cities – Bath, Bristol, Cambridge, Cheshire, Chester, Cornwall, Coventry, Cumberland, Devon, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Newcastle upon Tyne, Norwich, Somerset, Sussex, Westmorland, York and parts of Shropshire, the Inns of Court on the outskirts of historic London, and guildhalls within the City of London.
Early Modern London Theatres
EMLoT aims to locate, assess and digest all published transcriptions of documents relating to professional performance in purpose-built theatres in the London area before 1642. Its emphasis on late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century play editions and other works as sources for understanding the pre-1642 theatre distinguishes EMLoT from most other reference works, which have tended to overlook the rich material available from this period. Data for all theatres north and south of the Thames was completed and uploaded in 2024 for open access.
On the Road Again: Tracking Itinerant Performers through Time
In 2015 a SSHRC Connections grant made possible the conversion of this partnership portal to a new site that connects data from primary sources such as historic documents with images, GIS mapping and newspaper clippings, for the study and understanding of touring entertainment from the 14th to the 20th centuries in Britain and North America. Itinerant performers have much in common across centuries and countries. They travel similar routes, perform in varied locations and circulate cultural practices.
