Sampling the Media Habits of a Shakespeare Company: Testing a Software Prototype in Rehearsal

Abstract

This article draws upon a week of rehearsal observation with the American Shakespeare Centre (ASC) in Staunton, VA, during the testing process for an app prototype over the spring and summer of 2012. One of a strikingly small number of digital resources developed specifically with theatre companies in mind, the app - a mobile script tool with the working title 'MyShx' - is a proof-of-concept digital prompt-book designed to serve the collaborative needs of theatre practitioners during the rehearsal process. The article offers a brief account of the process of testing the app during the life-cycle of a play (in this case, Cymbeline) in production, and analyses its various challenges and uses by drawing on feedback given by the company members via web surveys and more informal discussions. It offers a consideration of the potential for digital resources to create archivable traces of the creative processes involved in making theatre (script edits, directors' notes, blocking plans, etc.), as well as the use of other resources, both analogue and digital, in rehearsal, providing insight into the heterogeneous practices of professionals dedicated to the pleasure and discipline of an essentially unstable medium. In doing so, it illuminates the parallels that may be drawn between the instability of live performance and software development, addressing the role of digitisation in intensifying existing questions concerning intellectual property, archiving, and re-use of a specific, material text.

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