YONG Li Lan, HWANG Ha Young, LIM Eng Hui Alvin, TAKIGUCHI Ken, LEE Chee Keng, SUEMATSU Michiko, KOBAYASHI Kaori and LEE Hyon-u

Asian performance cultures produce a rich diversity of interactions with the idea of Shakespeare embodied in his work—as classics of Western dramatic form; as the playwright with the strongest claim to universal appeal; as cultural capital; and as the supreme model of the English language. To give scholars, practitioners, teachers, students and general audiences access to productions in these cultures, the Asian Shakespeare Intercultural Archive (A|S|I|A) is building a multilingual online resource of performance materials. The project is multinational, with a team of over 60 scholars, translators, theatre practitioners, designers and programmers in East and Southeast Asia, the US and the UK. Undergraduate and graduate students are part of the team, most of them from the Department of English Language and Literature, but some from other departments in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the Faculty of Science and from other universities.

The archive will eventually hold 70 productions from East and Southeast Asia, and provides a full set of features:

• Users can switch between English, Mandarin, Japanese and Korean on the website
• Complete video recordings of all productions can be viewed online
• Each video is accompanied by the original script and translations in a text window that displays 8-10 lines at a time
• Photos, programmes and videos of rehearsals and interviews
• Parallel databases in English, Mandarin and Japanese highlight the unique intercultural profile of a performance: its creators, dates and venues; art/forms, languages and staging; receptions and reviews; historical and cultural references
• A Notepad attached to each video contains editors’ and translators’ notes, and users can add their own notes for private, group or public access
• A personal workspace saves video bookmarks and searches
• A forum for members to exchange views, news, and information

A|S|IA now has nearly 1500 registered users, and is recording 25 – 50 visits a day. It is being used in university courses and research in Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, the UK and the US, as well as by people outside universities.