Theatre Makers Asia (TMA) is an online archive developed by the National University of Singapore in collaboration with theatre practitioners. Focusing on the work of major theatre makers in the East and Southeast Asian region, TMA expands the inter-Asian circulation of their aesthetic influence through the following integrated components:

• Streaming videos of full video recordings
• Accompanied by the original script and its English translation
• Related materials including stage photos, programmes, and related multimedia content
• Data of each production
• Data of featured theatre makers
• Singapore Theatre Database: Collaborations and Festivals

When completed, the archive will contain a collection of productions by influential theatre makers from Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, which span some of the most significant practices in the region. It will also feature a database of inter-Asian collaborative projects and performance festivals, with Singapore as a node for cultural exchange.

TMA belongs to a larger project called Asian Intercultural Digital Archives (AIDA, http://aida-web.org). It was developed as part of three projects funded by the Singapore Ministry of Education at the National University of Singapore: Relocating Intercultural Theatre (MOE2008-T2-1-110), Digital Archiving and Intercultural Performance (MOE2013-t2-1-011), and Digital Performance Scholarship (MOE2018-T2-2-092).

AIDA consists of three digital archives of performances, each of which has a unique and distinctive subject and features. The first and most developed of the archives is the Asian Shakespeare Intercultural Archive (A|S|I|A, http://a-s-i-a-web.org), which currently contains 52 Shakespeare-related productions produced in East and Southeast Asia. Focusing on the intercultural reach of the productions, A|S|I|A is designed as a multilingual online archive in which the scripts and data are translated into 4 languages (English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean). The second archive is the Contemporary Wayang Archive (CWA, http://cwa-web.org). CWA’s collection covers a range of contemporary practices of Wayang Kulit performances in Java, which demonstrate negotiations between the traditional conventions and contemporary innovations. 

TMA, in contrast, aims to examine and experiment in the possibility of digital archives as a platform for collaborative research on and creative responses to works that marked milestones in the history of contemporary theatre in East and Southeast Asia. It will also form a parallel archive to A|S|I|A, archiving non-Shakespearean productions by theatre makers who are also featured in A|S|I|A.