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Speech, Theatre & Drama Research Guide

Biographical Sources

Dictionary of Literary Biography REF PS 21.D5
Famous Actors and Actresses of the American Stage REF PN 2285.Y6 1975

Databases

Dictionaries & Encyclopedias - General and background information on a topic.

McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama REF PN 1625.M3
Oxford Companion to American Theater, REF PN 2220.B6 1984
Cambridge Guide to World Theater REF PN 2035.C35 1988
Dictionary of Costume GT 507.W5 1969
20th Century Theater PN 2189.L65 1983

Electronic Resources

American Theatre Wing's Tony Awards Searchable archives coverage starts with 1947.

American Variety Stage A multimedia anthology selected from various Library of Congress holdings. This collection illustrates the vibrant and diverse forms of popular entertainment, especially vaudeville, that thrived from 1870-1920. Included are 334 English- and Yiddish-language playscripts, 146 theater playbills and programs, 61 motion pictures, 10 sound recordings and 143 photographs and 29 memorabilia items documenting the life and career of Harry Houdini. Groups of theater posters and additional sound recordings will be added to this anthology in the future.

Artslynx Resources for Theatre Artslynx is especially designed to provide the most efficient navigation to valuable information for the student, scholar, educator, and researcher in the arts.

BroadwayWorld.com

Costumer's Manifesto This web site's creator is the costume designer and a Professor of the Theatre Department of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She regularly teaches classes in costume history, design, construction, theatrical makeup, and theatre history. However, she is best known for her creation of The Costumer's Manifesto, one of the World Wide Web's largest, and most eclectic, costume sites.

Dance - Educational Technology Clearinghouse Valuable links for teachers, administrators, grant-seekers, and other members of the educational community. Quick links to the most useful reference sources on the Web.

Dance Resources, Ballet Resources and more from Artslynx

Getty Museum - Collections

Glossary of Technical Theatre Terms Over 800 terms defined, search or browse.

Great Performances, Dance from PBS

InterPlay An index to the complete texts of plays in collections, anthologies and periodicals in the PSU Library.

International Theatre Design Archive Project 2000 Index of scene designs, costume designs and lighting designs. Searchable by title of play, playwright, designer and producer.

Internet Broadway Database IBDB (Internet Broadway Database) archive is the official database for Broadway theatre information. IBDB provides records of productions from the beginnings of New York theatre until today. Details include pertinent people involved as well as interesting facts and production statistics. Get a list of every production of Hamlet on Broadway or a list of your favorite actor's credits. Find out what played at a particular theatre or what shows opened in a specified Broadway season.

Library of Congress Presents Music, Theatre and Dance A performing arts digital library. This Web site, formerly known as "I Hear America Singing," invites visitors to experience the diversity of American performing arts through the Library of Congress's unsurpassed collections of scores, sheet music, audio recordings, films, photographs, maps, and other materials. Soon, visitors will be able to take virtual seat in the Library's Coolidge Auditorium, and other performance venues, to hear concerts performed by world-class artists, and premieres of some of the seminal works of the 20th and 21st centuries.

McCoy's Guide to Theatre and Performance Studies

New York Times Theatre Theatre reviews from 1996 to current.

Performing Arts Encyclopedia A guide to the performing arts collections and exhibitions at the Library of Congress

Performing Arts in America 1875-1923 A searchable database of 16,000 objects representing archival materials from one of the strongest periods in the New York Public Library's Performing Arts Library collections.

PlayBill Online

Theatre Journals, Magazines & Other Publications

TheatrePedia - The ELAC Internet Theatre Library Large collection of links to research and career information.

WWW Virtual Library for Theatre and Drama Links to resources in more than 50 countries around the world for professionals, amateurs, academics and students of all ages.

Literary Criticism -- Literary criticism analyzes, compares and contrasts, interprets, or evaluates works of literature. The print and electronic resources listed below contain biographical information on authors and critical essays regarding their literary works. Most of these indexes list scholarly journals and books on a specific work. Choose the reference work which is most related to your author and the literary time period.

Critical Survey of Short Fiction REF PN 3321 C7
Gale's Literature Criticism from 1400-1800 REF PN 86 L56
Gale's Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism REF PN 761 .N56
Gale's Contemporary Literary Criticism REF PN 771 .C59
Gale's Twentieth Century Literary Criticism REF PN 771.G27
Gale's Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism REF PN 681.5 C57
Short Story Criticism REF PN 3373 S 386
Survey of Long Fiction REF PN 81 C7 1983
Gales Shakespearean Criticism REF PR 2965.S44
Magill’s Critical Survey of Drama: Foreign Language Series REF PN 1625 C74 1986 -- Entries are arranged alphabetically by author. There is a list of the playwright’s principal works, literary forms, achievements, biographical information, analysis of his/her works and a bibliography.
Magill’s Critical Survey of Drama REF PN 2035 C7 1985 -- Entries are arranged alphabetically by author. There is a list of the playwright’s principal works, literary forms, achievements, biographical information, analysis of his/her works and a bibliography.
Humanities Index Index Table H1.A3 56
Essay and General Literature Index INDEX TABLE AI 3 .E752 -- Identifies literary criticism found in collected essays or chapters in one book.This index is arranged by subject and author.

NOTE: The best sources to use above are the ones with "criticism" in their title. These multi-volume works have an index in the last volume which indexes all of the volumes by the title or by the author. The excerpts in the "criticism" resources are actual reprints from scholarly journals and books. Each article or book excerpt/reprint can be used as a quote or source in your research paper. Logan Library may not have the journal or the book, but the most important part of the literary criticism is reprinted in these books.

Scripts/Screenplays

Drew’s Script-o-Rama http://www.script-o-rama.com/
The Daily Script http://www.dailyscript.com/

Print Indexes To locate a copy of a play contained in a collection

Ottemiller’s Index to Plays in Collections, 6th ed. REF Z5781.08 1976
Ottemiller’s Index to Plays in Collections, 7th ed. REF Z5781.08 1988
Play Index, 1949-1992 REF Z5781. P53
Monologue Index: A Guide to 1,778 Monologues from 1,074 Plays REF PN 2080.S6 1995
Holiday Plays PS 627.H65 H64 1983
Best Plays 1903-1989 PN 6112 .B45 -- The season on and off Broadway, stage productions, followed by the year’s best plays, synopses, biographical sketches and other materials. Substantial quotations from pivotal scenes.
Best Short Plays of the World Theater PN 6112.R53 1973 -- Collections of plays with some dialogue.

Interviews

Writers at Work; the Paris Review Interviews. PN 453. W735

Reviews

Selected Theater Criticism 1900-1950 REF PN2277.N5 S44 1985

Plot Summaries

Magill's Masterpieces of World Literature REF PN 44 M3 1952 -- Includes type of work (drama, poetry, biography, novel, history, speech, treatise, etc.), characters, a critique or short critical analysis of the book and a plot summary. (Poetry of Basho)
Masterplots Digests of World Literature REF PN 44 M33 1976 -- Includes type of work, characters, a critique or short critical analysis of the book and a plot summary.
Digest of 500 Plays REF PN 6112.5 S42 1963
500 Plays: Plot Outlines and Production Notes REF PN 2052.S52