Location: ATNU Lunchtime Seminar, Newcastle University

As prompter to the leading London acting companies in the Restoration, John Downes was responsible for everything from preparing scripts to coordinating scene changes.  One of the many tasks undertaken by Downes and his underlings was to write out the ‘parts’ of a play, which is to say sheets of paper containing only  a character’s lines and a short cue. Actors would memorize these ‘parts’ and then perform a play with little knowledge about those aspects of the drama they weren’t involved with. In order to allow us to see plays of the seventeenth and eighteenth century in the same partial way that actors saw them in, I built a digital version of Downes: a JavaScript web app that takes playscripts in TEI XML and returns the ‘parts’. This talk will explain how the app works, why I – as a teacher and researcher – wanted to build it, and what I might do next with this project.

No prior knowledge of JavaScript or Restoration theatre required. You can try out the beta version of the web app here: http://prompter.jharrimansmith.net