The IBDB takes center stage
Legit archive puts the history of theater online
Taking its cue from the superbly useful Internet Movie Database, the Internet Broadway Database is a peerless resource for historic information about Broadway plays. It's run by The League of American Theatres and Producers, and lets you find quickly the answers to all the questions you'd ask about a play; namely: when it opened and closed, who was in it, and what else those thesps and writers have done.
On the front page, there's a feature that lets you choose a day of the year and see events related to that day-- handy if you want to wish someone a happy birthday www.ibdb.com/onthisday.asp?date=10/15/2003 and remind them how they compare to, say, P.G. Wodehouse http://www.ibdb.com/person.asp?id=7988.
What's especially fascinating is that while many Web archives tend to have spotty information earlier than the '90s (the dawn of the Web), the IBDB has details about theaters such as the Nassau Street Theatre http://www.ibdb.com/venue.asp?ID=1303, which existed from 1732 to 1754 -- that's right, 250 years ago. It's also amazing to see how many different performances written by the Bard http://www.ibdb.com/person.asp?ID=8638 have been put on -- 421 times, with Hamlet http://the-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/hamlet/ accounting for 60 of those and The Comedy of Errors http://the-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/comedy_errors/ for one.
The site says much of the information comes from old play bills -- it would be a great addition to see scans of those added as well. Pictures of the theaters, or even the actors, would be great, and possibly links to other online resources, even the IMDB, for people who crossed over to film or TV. And one feature is missing from the otherwise incredibly powerful advanced search: it's natural to want to pick a single date or date range, and see a list of the productions that were playing then.
Got a site to share with me? Email tfsmith@reedbusiness.com
