Introduction
Theatre production at Northwestern University boasts a robust schedule each school year. This database provides an easily accessible record of performers, musicians, and stage crew members who participated in each production. It is limited to productions have occurred under the auspices of the Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts, formerly known as the Theatre and Interpretation Center, and as such does not include those productions that fall within the realm of being exclusively student produced.
This database is designed to be an internal resource for the Wirtz Center, the Theatre Department, and the School of Communication to track student involvement within Wirtz Center productions, as well as bring attention to and further organize the production history holdings of the NU Library Archives and make this information accessible to NU alumni and the general public, promoting greater awareness of the outstanding creative work and talented artists that NU fosters.
How to use this database:
There are different levels of access to the data included in this project:
Northwestern Access – Current Northwestern netID users on campus or through the campus VPN can request access to a more robust collection of search options, which currently include the production titles and seasons, but also a name search, which includes roles (character name/production function such as director or choreographer), team (production team/cast/music team), and career (Undergraduate, Graduate, Faculty, etc.).
Administrator Access – For database creators/managers and high-frequency Faculty/Staff users. Provides access to all possible data, as well as the ability to create sharable reports from that data.
Public View – this is currently limited to a list view of productions, searchable by season. See “Plays by Year” above.
Note on Information Sourcing
The data included in this database has been pulled primarily from production programs, and as such reflects a snapshot of the particular moment in time when a given show was produced. Due to this method of sourcing information, there may be inconsistencies across different productions in how a person’s name appears. We have attempted to disambiguate those differences through referencing Northwestern student & employment records where possible, but there may still be some inconsistencies present.
Graduation years and cohorts at time of production are approximate.
Acknowledgements
This project was made possible in part due to a grant from the Alumnae Association of Northwestern University.
Many people have worked on making this project a reality, including the following:
Roxane Heinze-Bradshaw, Project Director
Richard G., Software Engineer
Ann Knauth, Manager of Web Services
Student Contributors: Haley Bart, Ilya Solovjov, Mariel Melendez Mulero, Claudia Kinahan, Katie Bohne Cummins, Michael Mueller
NU Staff: Zhen Zhao, Pete Brace, Jamie Mayhew, Matthew Richardson
Did We Miss Something?
Did you find a gap in the archive? Or some incorrect information? Please let us know!