Spotlight on the Working Group Theatralia: Toward digital descriptive models for the performing arts

DARIAH is delighted to publish the latest Spotlight article Toward digital descriptive models for the performing arts: Spotlight on the Working Group Theatralia. This article is part of the DARIAH Spotlight campaign, a monthly series that focuses on digital scholarship within the DARIAH network.

Written by Cécile Chantraine Braillon, La Rochelle Université (France) and Anamarija Žugić Borić, Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research (Croatia), this article presents the work conducted within the Theatralia Working Group to address the growing digital transformation of the performing arts. Bringing together around 30 scholars, GLAM professionals, and artists, the group fosters interdisciplinary research on digitization, digital performance, digital methodologies, and archiving in the performing arts.

After an initial phase dedicated to identifying the new challenges and emerging needs raised by the performing arts’ adaptation to the digital turn, the group underscored a key epistemological issue: the need for a shared computational language to describe and represent the field, enabling meaningful data exchange and generating real scholarly value. In its second phase, Theatralia therefore refocused its efforts on refining such digital description models and supporting their integration into broader archival infrastructures. This Spotlight delves into the issues identified and the task of building and further developing a thesaurus for performing arts.