AusStage, the online database compiled at Flinders University in South Australia, covers nation's theatre history

The interface of AusStage online database, recording Australia's history of theatre and live performance events, venues, contributors, organisations, resources and abstract (play script or score).
Image courtesy AusStage

AusStage online database, compiled at Flinders University in South Australia, became the most comprehensive – and the world’s only – record of Australian theatre and live performances, back to the first colonial one by convicts at Port Jackson in 1789 and, before that, Aboriginal corroborees.

AusStage's purpose was to address a gap in accessible information about events (including spoken word, poetry, circus), venues, organisations, people and resources involved in Australian theatre, drama and performance studies.

Led by Flinders University, the AusStage project was instigated by the Australasian Drama Studies Association in 1999 and funded by an Australian Research Council grant. Other universities contributing were La Trobe (Victoria), Queensland, New South Wales, Western Australia, Newcastle and Queensland University of Technology. The Australia Council, the Performing Arts Special Interest Group and and industry representative Playbox (later Malthouse) Theatre Company, Melbourne, also were initial collaborators.

A prototype of the database was built for the Adelaide Festival Centre Trust by Joh Hartog and Julie Holledge (of Flinders University) and launched in 2002. The database had more than 250,000 records by 2018. In Phase 2 (2003-05), with extra funds from the Australian Research Council and Curtin University joining the group, the database was reorganised with to emphasise data entries that expanded from 7,000 to 35,000. The visiual interface was improved in 2017-18. Information about performances is recorded as events, venues, contributors, organisations, resources and abstract (play script or score).

Among AusStage's many uses, one researcher mapped Aboriginal corroboree performances in the 19th Century and linked them to tribal and language groups. A social network analysis of Australian performing artists found only 3.6 degrees of separation between them.

At 2019, partners in the project were the Association of Performing Arts Collections Flinders University and the State Theatre Company of South Australia, with Queensland, Deakin, Griffith, Melbourne, Edith Cowan, La Trobe, Monash, Sydney, Newcastle, Queensland University of Technology and New South Wales universities, with the Centre for Ibsen Studies at Oslo University in Norway and the Performing Arts Heritage Network. Project advisors included the Performing Arts Collection of South Australia.