Games and Theatre in Shakespeare's England Edited by Tom Bishop, Gina Bloom, and Erika T. Lin. Cultures of Play. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021; pp. 332. $136 cloth, €108.99 e-book.

Abstract

digital projects once they are complete, and whether digital scholars should also be programmers (Escobar Varela votes yes—at least somewhat). I found Chapter 8, “The Imperative of Open and Sustainable Data” particularly useful in its advice that scholars determine which components of a project should be saved and how, rather than trying to preserve a project across inevitable platform and software changes. Sharing data is critical “to allow others to verify our results, to enable other researchers to combine our data with their own datasets to ask new questions, and, equally important, for use in training courses” (170). Escobar Varela cautions, however, that “sharing without preservation is meaningless” (164). But what does it mean to preserve digital projects? Escobar Varela advises readers to identify “the data, the data models, and the visualizations and interfaces worth keeping for posterity” (174), while recognizing that the theorization of ephemerality in performance studies equips the field both to understand and to value the temporary nature of much digital inquiry. This chapter is vital reading for scholars, graduate advisors, and administrators who might find themselves in the position of overseeing, advocating for, or explaining digital projects and who thus need a concrete understanding of the challenges specific to digital scholarship. With its impressive survey of scholarly projects, methods, and debates, Theater as Data is an important text for everyone working at the intersections of the digital humanities and theatre, dance, and performance studies.