Research guides: Communication Arts: Plays, Performances, and Primary Sources

Find plays

To find plays in the Library, search by play title and/or playwright in the Library's catalogue.

Drama Online
Providing a multimedia experience of theatre, Drama online is a digital library of nearly 4,000 playtexts, over 700 hours of video, over 400 audio plays, and over 500 books of criticism and performance practice from leading theatre publishers and companies.
Theatre Performance and Design Collection
Covers all aspects of theatre from production and design to performance, including, set design, lighting design, sound design, costume design, makeup. Video collections include the National Theatre Collection, Royal Shakespeare Company, Theatre in Video 1-2
Coverage: 17th century - present
Includes video performances, audio dramas, and designs. It combines content types used in theatre education (filmed stage performances, masterclasses, documentaries) with teaching tools (playlists, video clips, on-screen transcripts), and production designs. The collection includes: * 300 audio plays from L.A. Theatre Works * 750 hours of filmed stage performances, documentaries, and video training materials, including 25 premium performances of plays and musicals from the New York theatre scene * 100,000 pages of primary and secondary design resources, including sketches, photographs, technical drawings, monographs, articles, and dissertations * 40,000 pages of monumental reference works, encyclopedias, images, flyers, playbills, postcards, scrapbooks, and other resources
Literature Online (LION)
Full text journal articles and other criticism and reference resources on works relating to English and American literature, and early Canadian poetry.
Coverage: 8th century - present
Asian American Drama
Full-text of plays (some not previously published). Database includes biographical, production, and theatrical information.
Coverage: 1891 - present
Also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays.
Black Drama
Full text of plays by writers from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries.
Coverage: 1850 - present
Also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays.
Latino Literature: Poetry, Drama and Fiction
Fiction, poetry and plays written in English and Spanish by Chicano, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and other Latino authors working in the United States.
Coverage: late 19th century - present
Early English Books Online (EEBO)
Facsimiles of works printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, British North America, and works in English printed elsewhere.
Coverage: 1475 - 1700
EEBO contains images of works by such authors as Malory, Spenser, Bacon, More, Erasmus, Boyle, Newton, and Galileo. The database also includes musical exercises by Henry Purcell, novels by Aphra Behn, prayer books, pamphlets, proclamations, almanacs, calendars, and many other primary resources.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)
English and other language books, pamphlets, broadsides and other ephemera published in the United Kingdom and the Americas.
Coverage: 1701 - 1820
Included are significant collections of women writers, collections on the French Revolution, numerous 18th century editions of the works of Shakespeare, and multiple editions of other works of literature.

Google Books
Full-text is available for plays out of copyright. "Limited preview" is available for plays within copyright (pages or sections will be omitted).

Find performances

Drama Online
Providing a multimedia experience of theatre, Drama online is a digital library of nearly 4,000 playtexts, over 700 hours of video, over 400 audio plays, and over 500 books of criticism and performance practice from leading theatre publishers and companies.
Theatre Performance and Design Collection
Covers all aspects of theatre from production and design to performance, including, set design, lighting design, sound design, costume design, makeup. Video collections include the National Theatre Collection, Royal Shakespeare Company, Theatre in Video 1-2
Coverage: 17th century - present
Includes video performances, audio dramas, and designs. It combines content types used in theatre education (filmed stage performances, masterclasses, documentaries) with teaching tools (playlists, video clips, on-screen transcripts), and production designs. The collection includes: * 300 audio plays from L.A. Theatre Works * 750 hours of filmed stage performances, documentaries, and video training materials, including 25 premium performances of plays and musicals from the New York theatre scene * 100,000 pages of primary and secondary design resources, including sketches, photographs, technical drawings, monographs, articles, and dissertations * 40,000 pages of monumental reference works, encyclopedias, images, flyers, playbills, postcards, scrapbooks, and other resources
Theatre in Video
Plays, documentaries, interviews, and instructional materials in more than 550 hours of streaming video.
Coverage: 1930s - present
Theatre in Video brings together hundreds of the worldâ€™s most important plays, documentaries, interviews, and instructional materials in more than 550 hours of streaming video. From celebrated productions of Shakespeare to rare, in-depth footage of the work of Samuel Beckett, the collection covers a wide range of 20th century theatre history. Interviews with directors, designers, writers, and actors, along with excerpts of live performances, deliver an authentic, behind-the-scenes look at hundreds of productions.

Media Resource Library
The Media Resources library provides access to over 20,000 streaming titles and houses approximately 9,500 physical resources (i.e. DVD, 16mm, VHS).

What are Primary Sources?

Definition

Firsthand observations of a time, person, event, or material culture associated with a time, person, or event.

Some types

Plays … video recordings… newspapers ... magazines ... photographs .. theatre posters ... theatre tickets … playbills … theatre reviews …

Source: Francisco San Martin, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons.

Theatre in Context Collection
Find images, playbills, postcards, scrapbooks and other ephemera resources relating to Canadian and American theatre.
Coverage: 16th century - present
Theatre Performance and Design Collection
Covers all aspects of theatre from production and design to performance, including, set design, lighting design, sound design, costume design, makeup. Video collections include the National Theatre Collection, Royal Shakespeare Company, Theatre in Video 1-2
Coverage: 17th century - present
Includes video performances, audio dramas, and designs. It combines content types used in theatre education (filmed stage performances, masterclasses, documentaries) with teaching tools (playlists, video clips, on-screen transcripts), and production designs. The collection includes: * 300 audio plays from L.A. Theatre Works * 750 hours of filmed stage performances, documentaries, and video training materials, including 25 premium performances of plays and musicals from the New York theatre scene * 100,000 pages of primary and secondary design resources, including sketches, photographs, technical drawings, monographs, articles, and dissertations * 40,000 pages of monumental reference works, encyclopedias, images, flyers, playbills, postcards, scrapbooks, and other resources
ARTstor
Collection of images of architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative art, design, and various forms of visual culture. Artstor's high-quality collections and key functionality are now on JSTOR.
Coverage: prehistoric - present
ARTstor's software tools allow the viewing and analyzing of images through features such as zooming and panning, saving groups of images online for personal or shared uses, and creating and delivering both online and offline presentations.