Warren Hunting Smith Library: Theatre: Subject Guide

SUBJECT | THEATRE

Keywords and Phrases

The success of your search will depend, in large part, on the keywords and phrases that you select. You can search them in combination or use the advanced search features and Boolean AND, OR & NOT to expand or narrow your results. For more savvy search tips, see the guide: How To: Begin Your Research Here. Hint: put phrases in quotations!
Here are some sample search combinations for Theatre:

(intimacy OR immediacy) AND "contemporary performance"
Shakespeare AND "film adaptation"
playwriting AND "black arts movement"

Scholarly Articles

Performing Arts Periodicals Database This link opens in a new window
Scholarly articles about the arts and entertainment industry - including dance, drama, theater, stagecraft, musical theater, film, and television.
Project Muse This link opens in a new window
Full text articles in interdisciplinary subjects such as literature, history, visual and performing arts, cultural studies, political science, and gender studies.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Interdisciplinary collection of scholarly articles and ebooks.
Film and Television Literature Index This link opens in a new window
Articles from scholarly, popular, and trade publications about the film and television industries.

Images, Audio, and Streaming Video

Belknap Collection for the Performing Arts
The archive includes more than 60,000 playbills, programs, costume and stage designs, sheet music, theatrical scrapbooks, prints, etchings, drawings, photographs, posters, and scripts spanning all of the performing arts.
Billy Rose Theatre Division
The Billy Rose Theatre Division of The New York Public Library is one of the largest and most comprehensive archives devoted to the theatrical arts. Encompassing dramatic performance in all its diversity, the division is an indispensable resource for artists, writers, researchers, scholars, students, and the general public.
Music, theater and dance : a performing arts digital library
Formerly known as I Hear America Singing, this website is a Library of Congress Web project, forming part of their Music, Theatre, and Dance Collection. The project aims to celebrate America's musical heritage and provide access to the Library's vast collection of sheet music, audio recordings, and other resources.

Silent Film Online This link opens in a new window
Features, serials, and shorts from the 1890s to the 1930s (a subset of AVON).
Theatre in Video This link opens in a new window
20th century theatre history including documentaries, performances, and international productions (a subset of AVON).
Visual & Performing Arts in Films on Demand This link opens in a new window
Music & Dance in Films on Demand This link opens in a new window

Shakespeare and Co.

Shakespeare Documented
A multi-institutional resource documenting Shakespeare in his own time, hosted by the Folger Library.
British Library
The Shakespeare and Renaissance collection at the British Library is one of many of their rich digital collections.
Hathitrust Digital Library
HathiTrust Digital Library is a digital preservation repository providing long-term preservation and access for public domain and in copyright content from research libraries worldwide. Hathi offers over 10 million volumes with 33% available full-text.

Sistuhs in the Struggle

Sistuhs in the Struggle by La Donna Forsgren
ISBN: 9780810142565
Publication Date: 2020-10-15
The first oral history to fully explore the contributions of black women intellectuals to the Black Arts Movement, Sistuhs in the Struggle reclaims a vital yet under-researched chapter in African American, women's, and theater history.

Very Short Introductions

Modern Drama: a Very Short Introduction by Kirsten Shepherd-Barr
ISBN: 9780199658770
Publication Date: 2016-05-01
Theatre: a Very Short Introduction by Marvin Carlson
ISBN: 9780199669820
Publication Date: 2014-11-01

Theatre