cetbase e cetdrama: online archives of plays and dramaturgy

Abstract

The article focuses on the digital archives of the Center for Theater Studies at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon, namely the CETbase and CETdrama projects. The first was a pioneering broad-spectrum project that, by recording information on national and international performances presented in Portugal, wanted to enhance the historical- archival component preserving the memory of performative events. It was intended, therefore, to counteract the tendency towards the oblivion to which their ephemeral nature seems to condemn them. The second was designed considering the context of globalization and the difficulty to award visibility to peripheral cultures, aiming to gather data and materials on contemporary Portuguese dramaturgy, developing two axes: a dictionary of authors and a thesaurus of plays, complemented by materials which concern both of them. Scientific research finds in new technologies the perfect allies for the realization and effectiveness of the referred projects.