Canon I
The CANON of TECHNICAL THEATRE HISTORY was the predecessor of CANON II. The aim was to increase awareness and understanding of the history of technical theatre in Europe: its practices and technologies.
Students and staff of nine European university institutions, research centres and dual education programs – from Belgium, Czech Republic, Spain, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom – collaborated to develop a timeline and a Canon of technical theatre . The methodology used and the developed tools are being documented as the project developed. The outputs of the project can be discovered below.
The Timeline – Canonbase
The timeline is a multilingual platform to allow users to visualise milestones and key examples of historical practices, artefacts, technologies and buildings. The online version is based on an open communication platform usable across Europe, mapping the contexts and influences of specific phenomenon of theatre practices and technologies as cultural heritage.
An extensive filtering system makes it possible to view the entries from different perspectives. The filtering can be based on a country, a technology, a discipline, people, relations, and so on. This innovative approach makes it possible to discover new relations, tracking the interconnecting relationships and influences of practices and technologies through time and space.
The Timeline is published here: canonbase.eu
The Canon
the Canon comprises 100 of the most significant practices, technologies, people, places, artefacts and buildings in technical theatre history. Each entry in the Canon is linked to the timeline, and is published with a catalogue sheet both digital and on paper.
The Canon is a representation of the history of theatre technology as European cultural heritage in a dynamic, engaging and varied way using modern technologies. The Canon will support not only education, but also technicians, scenographers, architects developing scenic spaces, researchers, cultural managers, artists, and spectators.
The methodology and the platform developed for the Canon will be transferable to other disciplines.
The 100 stories can be downloaded here or visited online here.
The teaching tools
The teaching tools, developed through the research of teachers and students, are connected to the Canon fact sheets and the timeline. These tools may be models, visualizations, recordings, and so on. The tools will, where possible, be made language independent. The tools can not only be used by teachers and students, but will also be available to a wider professional audience.
The tools represent not only the result of the project, but also an inspirational pedagogical approach.
The less text-based approach is appropriate to target groups in the technical field, that tend to be more visually oriented, and provides access across language barriers. The different methodologies to develop the tools are described in the methodology guidelines. They represent an innovative research, documentation and teaching approach that can be reused in different disciplines.
The tools are publisher on the Canonbase.
The methodology guidelines
Methodology guidelines describe a rationale and different approaches to teaching and researching the history of technical theatre. These guidelines will improve the training of future specialists in the field of theatre technology so they are aware of various approaches and possible solutions drawn from technical theatre history in their own and in other countries.
The focus is on target groups that have an active learning style, wanting to experience rather than to read, to work together rather than to stay in their niche field, for whom “history is a verb”. The methodology guidelines will inspire and enable other fields and education programmes to develop and enhance their practice.
The guidelines can be downloaded here. They are also part of the canonbase.
