My Experience With the CASP

When I first began to look over the Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project (CASP) (http://www.canadianshakespeares.ca/index.cfm)  I was a bit confused. In no way am I involved in theatre or know much about it but when I think of Shakespeare, I have never once thought about his relationship to Canada. This immediately drove an interest in me to discover how and why the two were related. After searching through a few pages on the sites home page I came across the database which gave a very thorough description of what the project was all about with over 530 collections of plays that have been identified as Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare. This blew me away completely. Because of my lack of knowledge on the subject I had expected this number to be low, maybe somewhere around 50, but to scroll through over 600 items was a surprise to say the least.

 

I continued to search throughout the site and came across the multimedia section which contained a great deal of audio and visual material. I have come to realize after almost 6 weeks in this course that these multimedia options are almost essential for any digital humanities project on the internet. The CASP even addresses this issue when they mention that multimedia offers “a more three dimensional sense of the contexts and performance techniques”. Regardless of what type of digital humanities project you are trying to convey, multimedia is an essential tool in the teaching process. For the CASP it is videos and audio from the plays themselves. For a project that focuses on World War II the presenter may want to make available videos, images, and maps of battle. While the content of multimedia may changes from project to project, its importance in use does not.

 

Finally I moved on and explored the App which has been created from this project. One important issue that seems to be constantly readdressed in this course is the idea of survivability of a project. Technology is constantly changing and improving. This statement is especially true for a tool like the internet which is being enhanced on a daily basis. Because of this, it is necessary for digital humanities projects to keep up with this quick pace so that they are not left behind as a website that has not been altered in four or five year will look incredibly outdated to a website of today. It seems that the CASP is aware of this which is evidently shown in the production of this app. Created for the IOS platform (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/romeo-juliet-the-shakespeare/id465502527?ls=1&mt=8), this app demonstrates how digital humanities projects are doing their part to stay relevant in an ever changing world of technology. By browsing through the Apple store it is evident that the CASP is not the only one who is attempting to break into the app market and it is my guess that this number will continue to grow.