For many who work with theatre information, the creation of a detailed, updatable index of all theatre performance in the UK since 1660, ideally including full cast list information, has been a long held dream. Many organisations in our sector have a history of documenting past productions from a specific venue or company (The Royal Opera House, The Royal National Theatre, The Royal Shakespeare Company, etc) and the V&A Theatre Collections (previously the Theatre Museum) holds extensive general indexes of UK performance. The vision for the project involves merging all that data, making it available online, and continuing to develop and sustain it as a national resource. This website will create a means of checking when shows have been produced, what shows a theatre has presented over a given period, and will enable users to generate a list of stage productions in which a given individual has had an involvement.
Since 2006, the National Performance DataBase project has received £48,000 from the MLA (Museums, Libraries & Archives Council). The initial £24,000 grant paid for a feasibility study, proving that the project is achievable; the second grant of an equal sum has enabled a database to be developed and loaded with test data donated by a group of key partners: