Online Theater Reference
Use these reference books to provide an overview of your topic, define terms, and list recommended readings. If connecting to subscription databases from home, make sure your computer is configured for off-campus access.
- Brill's New Pauly
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English edition of the authoritative reference work, devoted to interdisciplinary coverage of Greco-Roman antiquity. Includes coverage of ancient drama and theatrical architecture. - Broadway League: Research & InformationFrom the national trade association for commercial theater, this page includes broad data on audience demographics and selective gross/attendance for Broadway and touring productions.
- Cambridge Companions Online This link opens in a new window
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Includes Companions to Literature and Classics, Companions to Music, and Companions to Philosophy, Religion, and Culture.
- Contemporary Theatre, Film, and Television
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Online bio-bibliographical resource with information on the credits, awards, and ongoing work of contemporary figures in the performing arts. Part of Gale Ebooks.
- Digital Theatre+ This link opens in a new window
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DT+ includes streaming video of plays and performances produced on the contemporary British and American stage, interviews with professional practitioners and masterclasses on technique, study guides on classic works, and pedagogical guides for the classroom and theater production. - Drama Online — Bloomsbury This link opens in a new window
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Includes full text of plays and reference works, as well as streaming audio and video of performances. UCLA subscribes to the modules: Core Collection, Asian Theatre Video, Aurora Metro Books, BBC Drama Films, British, American, and Australian Video Collection, Classic Spring Oscar Wilde Collection, Critical Studies and Performance Practice, Donmar Shakespeare Trilogy, European Theatre Video Collection, L.A. Theatre Works, Maxine Peake as Hamlet, National Theatre Collections, Nick Hern Books Modern Plays, Oberon Books, Playwrights Canada Press, RSC Live Collections, Shakespeare in the Present, Shakespeare Video Collection, Shakespeare's Globe on Screen, Shakespeare's Globe to Globe Festival on Screen 1, Shakespeare's Globe to Globe Festival on Screen 2, Shakespeare's Heroes and Villains, Shakespeare in the Present, Stage on Screen, Stratford Festival Shakespeare Collection, TCG Plays, Theatre Performance and Practice Video Library. - Gale Literature Criticism This link opens in a new window
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Contains access to a wide range of literary criticism including biographical and bibliographic information on authors and their works. - Gale Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window
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Biographies, bibliographies, and critical analysis of authors from every age and literary discipline. Covers more than 120,000 novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, and other writers. Combines the core Gale Group literary databases: Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism, and Dictionary of Literary Biography. Complements Literature Criticism Online.
- Global Performing Arts Database (GloPAD)Contains records of "digital images, texts, video clips, sound recordings, and complex media objects related to the performing arts around the world, plus information about related pieces, productions, performers, and creators."
- Hemispheric Institute of the AmericasDigital project from NYU Libraries and NYU's Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics that "provides a digital venue for documenting the expression of social and political life through performance."
- Historical Dictionary of African American Theater
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Second edition, 2018. One concurrent user limit. - Historical Dictionary of Postmodernist Literature and Theater
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Seconde edition, 2016. One concurrent user limit. - International Dictionary of Theater
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Provides coverage of significant plays, playwrights, actors, directors, designers, and biographies (1992). - Internet Broadway Database (IBDB)Free site with production credits and basic information on specific Broadway theatrical productions.
- Inter-PlayOnline index to plays published in collections and anthologies. Particularly good for established authors like Tennessee Williams.
- Lortel Archives (Internet Off-Broadway Database)Catalogue of all shows produced Off-Broadway, including dates, opening night credits, and awards.
- Native American Women Playwrights ArchiveDirectory and bibliographies of resources on Native American women playwrights.
- New Play Exchange This link opens in a new window
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Search and discovery for plays using indexing terms for facets like playwright demographics, cast information, themes, etc. The database provides details about playwrights and creative works (generally unpublished), and also includes full text for some plays.
- Oxford Dictionary of Plays
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Each entry includes details of the title, author, date of writing, date of first performance, genre, setting, and composition of cast; there is also a summary of the play's plot, and a brief commentary.
- Oxford Handbooks Online This link opens in a new window
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Oxford Handbooks, now a part of Oxford Academic, provide review articles which summarize and analyze current research and trends in a given discipline. UCLA subscribes to most Oxford Handbooks Online, excluding a few individual titles.
- Oxford Reference for Theatre
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Online versions of reference works from Oxford University Press, including the Oxford Companion to the Theatre, Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, Oxford Companion to American Theatre, Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre, Oxford Dictionary of Plays, and Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. - Playbill VaultCovers 20th century Broadway history, sometimes including program images, headshots, and weekly Broadway grosses for more recent years.
- Play Index This link opens in a new window
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Identifies plays by topic, and also can help locate anthologies containing an individual play. - Routledge Handbooks Online This link opens in a new window
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Handbooks covering a wide range of humanities, social sciences, psychology and some science topics, published by Routledge, Ashgate and other imprints. Some CRC Press handbooks can also be accessed via this particular site. - Theatre in Context Collection This link opens in a new window
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A reference source that covers multiple aspects of the international theater, including full text of major reference materials and records for individual plays, people, theaters, productions, and production companies. Also includes images, playbills, postcards, scrapbooks and other ephemera. Formerly titled North American Theatre Online.
Selected Print Encyclopedias
Selected Biographical Sources
- American National Biography Online This link opens in a new window
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Biographies of more than 19,000 men and women who have influenced American history.
- American Playwrights Since 1945
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- Biography Index Past and Present (H.W. Wilson) This link opens in a new window
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Index of biographical books and articles from 1946 to present.
- Notable Women in the American Theatre: A Biographical Dictionary
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- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography This link opens in a new window
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An illustrated collection of 60,000 biographies of men and women who shaped all aspects of Britain's history, up to the present.