Streaming video of British theater productions plus supplementary study and teaching materials.
Digital collection of play scripts "from Aeschylus to the present day." Plays can be searched by criteria such as theme, genre, setting, and cast size. Includes streaming versions of performances from Shakespeare's Globe and National Theatre.
Collection of almost every play submitted for license between 1737 and 1824, plus documents that provide social context for the plays. Includes the London Stage Database, 1660-1800 and the companion Biographical Dictionary of Actors, etc.
Reference work covering all facets of the distinct form of dramatic theater that flourished in ancient Greece and reached its apex in Athens of the 5th century BCE.
Index of plays written from antiquity to the present and published from 1949 to the present. Searchable by title, author, subject, style, genre, cast type, and more.
Skillman's guide to print and electronic resources for reviews of performances of plays.
Web version of The Adelphi Theatre Calendar, ed. Alfred L. Nelson and Gilbert B. Cross (Greenwood Press, 1990- ). Provides cast lists and other performance information for plays, musicals, ballets, and other entertainments. Note: This calendar is the first title in the series The London Stage, 1800- 1900.
Resource on French theater of the 17th and 18th centuries. Includes information on performances, reviews from the time period, images from playbills, title pages, and some key reference works. Provided by Grenoble Alps University.
Search engine for playbooks produced in England, Scotland, and Ireland from the beginning of printing through 1660. Includes information about the original playbooks, their title-pages, paratextual matter, advertising features, bibliographic details, and theatrical backgrounds. (For the full text of the playbooks, see Early English Books Online.)
Catalog of over 3,000 plays published by Dramatists Play Service. Includes a plot summary for each play and a keyword search feature that can be used for locating plays dealing with certain issues or topics.
Information on the Russian modernist theater of the 1890s to the 1930s and the cultural milieu from which it grew. Includes production photos, set designs, costumes, and directors' sketches from the theater of Stanislavsky and Meyerhold; Chekhov; Mayakovsky and Bulgakov; Malevich and Tatlin; Stravinksy and Shostakovich. Searchable by production, designer, director, or artistic movement.
Coverage: 1907-1984
Index of major journals in the humanities and social sciences.
An index to plays in collections, anthologies, and periodicals searchable by author, title, and source. (Note that the call numbers in this index are not necessarily the call numbers used in the Lafayette Library's collection and that not all of these sources are in the Lafayette Library.)
Multidisciplinary bibliography indexing journal articles and "miscellany volumes" (conference proceedings, essay collections or Festschriften) covering medieval studies in disciplines ranging from history to languages to art and music.
Official archival database for Broadway theatre information from the League of American Theatres and Producers. Provides records of productions from the beginnings of New York theatre to present. Includes playwright, opening night cast, theater, performance statistics.
Information on all performances of the Metropolitan Opera from it's opening in 1883 to the present.
Combines the Oxford Modern Critical Editions, Critical Reference Editions, and Authorship Companions for all of Shakespeare's works, including sonnets and other verse. Each work is accompanied by extensive notes and critical commentary, and can be read in the original or modern spelling.
Archive devoted to the documentation of "all forms of dance, from all cultures, in print and other media. It includes materials in many languages and serves as an index to an international range of dance periodicals."
Searchable database of 16,000 objects representing archival materials on theater, dance, and popular performance drawn from the extensive Performing Arts collection at the New York Public Library. Includes newspaper clippings, vocal scores, photographs, publicity posters, and lobby cards. Also includes excerpts from moving pictures and sound clips.
Broadway shows from the 1930s-
This online collection of records from Playbill purports to be the largest Broadway database on the Internet. Rich in photos, the site is searchable by People, Shows, Theatres, Awards, Seasons, and Grosses.
Database of production details for new Irish plays produced since 1904. Scripts are sometimes available. From the Irish Theatre Institute.
Data on drama, secular music, and other popular entertainment in England from the Middle Ages until 1642. Includes information about patrons, the performance venues, and the routes performers took across the kingdom.
Over 1,000 prompt books demonstrating the ways in which different theatrical companies across the centuries have interpreted and directed productions of Shakespeare's plays.
1966-Present
Online collection of scholarly essays in Shakespeare studies and production. This resource is fully searchable across volumes or can be browsed by theme, volume, author, etc
Provides discographic information on commercially-released show music recordings from the late 19th century to the present. From the Library of Congress.
Intended for people who wish to compare and analyze the accents of different native and non-native English speakers, this site offers a large set of speech samples from a variety of language backgrounds. Sound clips and phonetic transcriptions are typically available. Useful for actors who need to learn an accent.
Streaming access to major motion pictures for educational purposes only. This link will allow instructors to request films for classes (login required) and allow all other users to access those films that have been licensed.
Index and full text of the Times Literary Supplement (London), an important source of reviews of books, plays, and films.
Collection of images, posters, playbills, books, objects, and ephemera (e.g. pamphlets, handbills) documenting popular entertainment in the Victorian era. Divided into 4 modules: spiritualism/magic; circuses; theater/music halls; and cinema.
A collection of public-domain scores from the John Hay Library of Brown University focusing on Yiddish-language music for the stage. Also includes art songs, folk songs, and sacred music in Yiddish and Hebrew.