The Intangible Nature of Drama Documents: an FRBR View

Abstract

As a pervasive form of artistic expression through ages and me- dia, drama features a twofold nature of its tangible manifestations (theatrical performances, movies, books, etc.) and its intangible abstraction (the story of Cinderella underlying Disney movie and Perrault's fable). The encoding of the intangible drama abstraction of drama documents is relevant for the preservation of cultural heritage and the didactics and research on drama documents. This paper addresses the task of encoding the notion of intangible story abstraction from the drama documents. The reference model is provided by a computational ontology that formally encodes the elements that characterize a drama, for purposes of semantic link- ing and inclusion in annotation schemata. By providing a formal expression posited between drama as work and its manifestations, the ontology-based representation is compliant with the model of Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR).