Primary Sources for Theater
The Library provides networked access to many more full-text, primary source databases than can be listed here. Others may be located through the Library Catalog and Databases, which contains an alphabetical list of online resources related to Linguistics, Language and Literature. NOTE: Also check the Periodical Databases tab (above) for resources covering periodical articles from the 19th century and earlier.
- Eight CenturiesFormerly known as 19th Century Masterfile. Searchable index to a variety of 19th century Anglo-American periodical articles, documents and other primary and secondary sources published before 1930. Many links to full text. Aggregates indexes to books, periodicals, newspapers, government documents and patents into a single resource.
- Abbey Theatre Minute Books, 1904-1939The Abbey Theatre minute books contain notes from meetings of the theatre’s Board of Directors. They offer a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes of the theatre, showing how the Abbey’s managers dealt with a variety of issues, from choosing plays to determining how much to pay their actors.
- ARTFL[The database] consists of nearly 2000 texts, ranging from classic works of French literature to various kinds of non-fiction prose and technical writing. The eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries are about equally represented, with a smaller selection of seventeenth century texts as well as some medieval and Renaissance texts ... Genres include novels, verse, theater, journalism, essays, correspondence, and treatises. Subjects include literary criticism, biology, history, economics, and philosophy. In most cases standard scholarly editions were used in converting the text into machine-readable form, and the data contain page references to these editions.
- Asian American Drama This link opens in a new windowOffers searchable full text of plays by Asian American dramatists "together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. Some 50% of these plays have never been published before. The database also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays." - Homepage, viewed February 2, 2006.
- Black Drama, 1850 to Present This link opens in a new window"This edition of Black Drama contains approximately 1,462 plays by 233 playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. The database also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays.Some 600 of the plays are published here for the first time, including a number by major authors. "--Homepage, viewed April 3, 2014.
- British PeriodicalsA fully searchable database that provides the full text of periodical articles published in Britain from the 1680s to the 1930s. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the fine arts and the social sciences, literature, music, art, drama, archaeology and architecture.
- Caribbean LiteratureA searchable collection of poetry and fiction produced in the region during the 19th and 20th centuries. Among the titles selected are numerous rare and hard-to-find works written in English, French, Spanish, Dutch, and various Creole languages.
- Contexto Teatral"A live archive of new plays by contemporary Spanish playwrights, most from Spain, but with a number of authors born abroad, mainly in Latin America. All playwrights are alive and under the age of sixty, and most were born in the 70s and 80s." - Theatre Times
"Contexto Teatral es una iniciativa de Nuevenovenos para difundir y visibilizar la dramaturgia." (site)
- Early English Books Online (EEBO)From the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War, Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475 - 1640), Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700), and the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661).
- Early Modern London Theatres This link opens in a new window"EMLoT lets you see what direct use has been made, over the last four centuries, of pre-1642 documents related to professional performance in purpose-built theatres and other permanent structures in the London area. It is not a comprehensive collection of those pre-1642 documents; rather, it charts the copies (or ‘transcriptions’) which were subsequently made of them. It thus gives you access to the varied and long ‘after-life’ of those documents. It tells you who used them, and when, and where you can find evidence of that use. It also gives you some access to what was used, because it includes a brief account (or ‘abstract’) of the transcription’s contents, together with a reference to the location of the original document. This database does not include play texts." (homepage, viewed April 3, 2014)
- Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare This link opens in a new window"The complete text of eleven major editions of Shakespeare’s works from the First Folio to the Cambridge edition of 1863-6, twenty four separate contemporary printings of individual plays, selected apocrypha and related works and more than 100 adaptations, sequels, and burlesques from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries."
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)ECCO is a comprehensive digital edition of The Eighteenth Century microfilm set, which has aimed to include every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas, between 1701 and 1800. Consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera. Subject categories include history and geography; fine arts and social sciences; medicine, science, and technology; literature and language; religion and philosophy; law; general reference. Also included are significant collections of women writers of the eighteenth century, collections on the French Revolution, and numerous eighteenth-century editions of the works of Shakespeare. Where they add scholarly value or contain important differences, multiple editions of each individual work are offered.
- Ensemble [An Open Database of the Performing Arts]A database of transcriptions and digitized images of early 20th century theater programs collected by the NY Public Library of the Performing Arts. Content expanding as more material is digitized and transcribed.
- Federal Theatre Project Collection This link opens in a new windowThe Federal Theatre Project Collection contains documentation for stage productions mounted by the Federal Theatre Project in the period 1935-39. These include a wide variety of materials: billboards, cast lists, correspondence, costume designs, ground plans, lighting cue sheets, lighting plots, music, photographs, playbills, playscripts and playscript "sides" (a "side" is an individual role or part), posters, production notebooks, programs, property lists, publicity reports and clippings, radio scripts, research reports, reviews, scenarios, set designs, study guides, and technical reports. There are approximately 5,000 playscripts and 2,500 titles ranging from vaudeville to classic theater.
- Global Performing Arts Database (GLOPAD)GloPAD is a multimedia, multilingual, Web-accessible database containing digital images, texts, video clips, sound recordings, and complex media objects (such as 3-D images) related to the performing arts around the world. All GloPAD records include authoritative, detailed descriptions of the digital objects, in addition to information about related pieces, productions, performers, and creators.
- Hemispheric Institute Digital Video LibraryCreated in partnership with NYU Libraries and with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this growing repository began as a collaborative effort to preserve Latin American political theater and performance works captured on video, making these cultural documents available worldwide. A trilingual Profile (English, Spanish and Portuguese) is created for each collection, contextualizing the videos with detailed production information, synopses, image galleries, texts, interviews, bibliographies and additional materials. (website)
- Henslowe-Alleyn Digitisation Project This link opens in a new windowThis archive includes the personal and professional papers of Edward Alleyn (1566-1626) and those he inherited from his father-in-law Philip Henslowe (d. 1616). As a group, these manuscripts comprise the largest and most important single extant archive of material on the professional theatre and dramatic performance in early modern England, the age of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Middleton, Heywood, Dekker, Chettle, and so many of their contemporaries and colleagues.
- Latino Literature: Poetry, Drama and Fiction This link opens in a new window"Latino Literature brings together more than 100,000 pages pages of poetry, fiction, and over 450 plays written in English and Spanish by hundreds of Chicano, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and other Latino authors working in the United States. Among the gems of the collection are nearly 800 items (poems, novels, and plays) that have never been published before. Researchers will also find numerous Chicano folk tales and audio files of selected poems and plays. It contains over 133,465 pages." (Homepage, viewed April 3, 2014)
- ProQuest One LiteratureA full-text collection of poetry, drama, and prose with complementary references sources. Primary texts include English poetry from 600 to the present; American and African-American poetry from 1603 to the present; English drama; English prose; full-text articles from literary journals; and biographical information on widely studied authors. Individual collections include American Drama (1714-1915) and English Drama (1280-1915).
- Mercury Theatre on the AirStreaming audio recordings of radio performances from 1938 to 1940, including Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" broadcast. Some Campbell Playhouse broadcasts are offered as well.
- Museum of the City of New York: Broadway ProductionsAn online archive of the Museum's theater production files--more than 30,000 photographs documenting over 5,000 Broadway productions. [In progress: images are made available here as they're digitized and cataloged.]
- North American Indian DramaFull text of plays by American Indian, First Nation, and Pacific Islanders playwrights of the 20th century; information about the plays and their production, and biographical data. Also includes issues of the Native playwrights' newsletter.
- North American Women's Drama This link opens in a new window"This edition of North American Women's Drama contains 1,517 plays by 330 playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more." (Homepage, viewed April 3, 2014) More than 30% of the plays in the collection have never been published before. The database also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays. The plays themselves have been selected using leading bibliographies and with the assistance of our editorial board"
- Play IndexIndex to more than 30,000 plays written from Antiquity to the present and published from 1949 to the present; includes mysteries, pageants, plays in verse, puppet performances, radio and television plays, and classic drama. All Play master records contain a link to the results of an Internet metasearch of specially selected Web sites to link to full text, criticism, and other useful information.
- Playbill Vault This link opens in a new windowA searchable, online archive of Playbill, including covers plus information on plays, theaters, awards, and other content included in the magazine back to 1930.
- Reader's Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 This link opens in a new windowA database containing comprehensive indexing of the most popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States. Reflects the history of 20th century America. Covers these areas: Aeronautics, African-Americans, Aging, Archeology, Astronomy, Automobiles, Biographies, Business, Children, Education, Environment, Fashion, Film, Fine Arts, Food, Foreign Affairs, Gardening, Health, History, Hobbies, Home, Journalism, Leisure Activities, Literature, Medicine, Music, News, Nutrition, Photography, Politics, Popular Culture, Radio, Religion, Science, Sports, Technology, Television, Travel. The complete database covers the years 1890 through 1982.
- Screen and Stage OnlineThis unique collection of Russian theater and film periodicals, which also includes material on other forms of entertainment (cabaret theater, circus) and mass culture in pre-revolutionary Russia, consists of various types of material ranging from sophisticated journals to cheaply produced magazines published in the last three decades of the Tsarist regime.
- Shakespeare Quartos ArchiveA digital collection of pre-1642 editions of William Shakespeare's plays. A cross-Atlantic collaboration has also produced an interactive interface for the detailed study of these geographically distant quartos, with full functionality for all thirty-two quarto copies of Hamlet held by participating institutions.
- Teatro Campesino Online Collection This link opens in a new windowFrom the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA) at University of California, Santa Barbara. This collection of 118 videos contains El Teatro Campesino plays, television specials, concerts, interviews, news footage, commercials, and workshops. The series includes the first known film that has a segment about the Teatro, "Huelga," narrated by Cesar Chavez. Other films range from the early actos to television specials on the movie "Zoot Suit." There are films of scenes from plays and whole plays, interviews with Luis Valdez and others, footage of the twentieth anniversary gala of El Teatro Campesino, and a documentary on the history of the Teatro made in 1981.
- Theatre Archive ProjectThe project aims to reinvestigate British theatre history 1945-1968, from the perspectives of both the theatregoer and the practitioner. The audio archive contains interviews with those visiting or working in the theatre in the period 1945-1968. Actors interviewed include Linda Bellingham, Bernard Hepton, Glenda Jackson, Murray Melvin, Joan Plowright, Corin Redgrave and Dudley Sutton. Writers include Trevor Griffiths, Peter Nichols, Ann Jellicoe, Ann Piper and Arnold Wesker. In addition there are interviews with theatre managers, producers, directors and designers, plus many interviews with ordinary theatregoers. The interviews with theatre professionals reveal their first encounters with the theatre, aspects of their work practices and the process of becoming a professional in what were often difficult circumstances. The interviews with theatregoers provide a contextualization of the productions and their reception by the communities at the time and in retrospect.
- Three centuries of English and American playsCall Number: Olin Microfiche 3394 (Guide in Olin Reference)Publication Date: Readex, 1991Included is every important play published in the English language in England from the year 1516 through 1800. American plays date from 1714 through 1830. Contains 895 early Larpent plays not originally issued on microprint.
National Theatre Collection
The CU Library has expanded its collection of streaming theater performances with the addition of the National Theatre Collection. Drawing on 10 years of National Theatre Live broadcasts as well as recordings never previously seen outside of the National Theatre’s archive, the video content includes 30 performances in this initial release. As a supplement to the filmed productions, exclusive digitized archival materials such as photographs, scripts, costume designs, and more will be available to provide behind-the-scenes background and contextual information. The collection features NTC performances of Medea, Frankenstein, Twelfth Night, The Cherry Orchard, Macbeth, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Antigone, and other contemporary productions of canonical plays.
Digital Theatre+
The Cornell community can now view streaming high-definition performances of contemporary British drama on Digital Theatre+. DT+ provides online access to a digital streaming video collection of unique films of current, leading British theatre productions. It includes behind-the-scenes documentaries as well as teaching and learning resources to facilitate a deeper understanding of the productions and texts. Learning resources include a detailed introduction, plot summary, character biographies, a relationship map, language analysis, scene study, performance background and historical context for each play.
Theater in Video!
This database contains performances of the world’s leading plays and film documentaries on the subject of theater in streaming video. Some plays presented in multiple productions exemplifying various interpretations of the text, and technical and cultural differences among the presentations. Stage work of directors and actors are cross-searchable and available for side-by-side comparison. Interviews with directors, designers, writers, and actors, along with excerpts of live performances, illustrate the development of texts and the productions.