The other day, I was trying to remember who performed a certain role in a play the Iowa City Community Theatre had done many years ago. The name was just not coming to me. I mentioned this to Sharon, my wife, who said it'd be nice if we had something like wikipedia for Iowa theatre. Yeah, that'd be cool... I mumbled and went to search in the green cloth-covered trunk into which we toss the programs of every show we've seen dating back to 1992. It's getting really full and there's no organization whatsoever. It took an hour or so to find the program I was looking for. Turns out Michael Stokes played the title role in Jesus Christ Superstar back in 2000. Oh yeah, I thought throwing the programs back in the trunk. That was a pretty good show.
Time passed and the idea kept rolling around in my head. Can anyone create a wiki? Do I need a server or something? And how would I get all that information when I certainly don't remember every show and every cast?
So I decided to investigate. Google is my friend and I'm sure he's yours, too. (Or is Google a she?) A quick search and I discovered Wikia, a free wiki site. A wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content. The more I explored the site, the more excited I became. What a great way to document the history of the Iowa Theatre community! And the best part is Wikis are collaborative. We can all get in there and add pages and information about our corner of the Iowa Theatre landscape.
So this is an invitation to YOU, the Iowa Theatre artist or patron. Go to the Iowa Theare Wiki and write your thoughts about the part of our rich community you know well. You can create a page for yourself and make sure everyone knows your contributions to Iowa Theatre. I've created a few pages to get things rolling, but feel free to edit those pages as, for instance, I'm sure some of you know City Circle or Theatre Cedar Rapids better than I do. Every show, every theatre, every theatre artist in Iowa should eventually get a page, all crosslinked to each other. For a particular show you were in, you could share an interesting story about the production, for example. For your personal page, include a list of shows you've been in, for instance.
Please use the discussion tabs to provide feedback on how to improve it. This is for all of us - it's not owned by me - so all ideas are more than welcome.
And thank you for being apart of this great theatre community.
--Matt Falduto
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2 comments:
Ok, how much info could we bring in from the book ICCT put out a while back. All the shows, casts and crews of course, but could we quote some of the intro, or would it be copyright infringement? Just curious.
I am not 100% certain, but I think if you make it clear the info is from the book, you'd probably be okay.
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