July 6, 2023

Alexandra E. LaGrand is a Ph.D. student in the Department of English who specializes in Shakespearean drama as performed in the eighteenth- and nineteenth centuries, studying the intersection of theatre history, textual studies, and gender with production prompt books. Her current research includes the publication of a Digital Humanities project, Points Like a Man: The Shakespearean Breeches Performance Catalogue, which launched this summer.

The catalogue was developed to be a resource to students, researchers, and scholars for reading about, exploring, and studying the rich genre of Shakespearean breeches performance. It aims to curate records of individual Shakespearean breeches performances by actresses around the world from 1660 to 1900, a 240-year time frame during which the genre of breeches performance rose to immense prominence.

The accessibility and presentation of these records are powered by Corpora, a WordPress plugin developed by the Center of Digital Humanities Research (CoDHR)’s Associate Research Scientist, Dr. Bryan Tarpley. By way of catalogue tags and search filters, users can trace patterns from actresses, the various roles they played, and the theatres at which they played on the project’s website:

Each catalogue record features information about a particular breeches performance, including actress name, date of performance, type of role (breeches or disguise), role name, play name, theatre and location of theatre, and source of record. Beyond this preliminary information, each record will eventually aim to include supplementary links to digitized materials from the performance, including prompt books, playbills, and images or prints when available.

Alexandra’s next endeavor is a research trip to the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, TX to photograph nineteenth-century playbills of Shakespearean productions in London.

Visit https://pointslikeaman.com to learn more, and stay up-to-date on the project by following @pointslikeaman on Twitter.