The Shund Theatre Database

DYBBUK is a 5-year research project, based at the University of Haifa and funded by the European Research Council, that sets out to uncover and explore the popular theatre that made up the daily cultural reality of the Jewish masses at the turn of the 20th century. It will crack-open the textual body of remaining musical and dramatic manuscripts, to the complete performances of the Yiddish popular theatre. As part of this project, we are currently developing and implementing an interactive open-access online database of Yiddish popular theatre materials. The database will be a rich, searchable, and constantly updated repository of artists, musicians, works, sources, and their diverse intersections. The database will contain information and archival materials about performances, their artistic contexts, with manuscripts, sound recordings, and relevant scholarship. This digital platform will enable us to analyze the transnational network of Yiddish popular theatre, to uncover and study new relationships between performances, artists, and dramatic and musical works. This presentation will focus on the theoretical, practical and historiographical challenges entailed in the planning, developing and implementing of the DYBBUK project database.