Theatre Research Resources

Online Playscripts

• Asian American Drama Online
• Black Drama 2nd Edition
• Black Drama 3rd Edition
• Contemporary World Drama
• Eighteenth Century Drama: Censorship, Society and the Stage
• English Drama
• North American Indian Drama
• North American Women’s Drama
• Twentieth-Century Drama
• Twentieth-Century North American Drama

Finding Plays

• Play Index

Literary Criticism

• Literature Criticism Online
• Literature Resource Center

Theatre & Drama Databases

• Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL)
• International Bibliography of Theatre and Dance (IBTD)
• Performing Arts Periodicals Database (formerly IIPA)
• MLA International Bibliography
• Design & Applied Arts Index

General Databases

• JSTOR

Magazine & Newspaper Databases

• Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive
• Nexis Uni
• ProQuest Historical Newspapers

More Theatre databases

• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• UIUC Theatre Dissertations in IDEALS
• Networked Digital Library Theses and Dissertations

Streaming Audio & Video Collections

• Audio Drama: L.A. Theatre Works
• BBC Shakespeare Plays Online
• Broadway HD
• Digital Theatre+
• Fashion Studies Online
• National Theatre Collection
• Shakespeare’s Globe on Screen (2008-2015)
• Shakespeare’s Globe on Screen 2 (2016-2018)
• Theatre in Video
• More Streaming Audio and Video Resources

Digital Image Collections

• Artstor
• Motley Collection of Theatre History and Costume Design
• Portraits of Actors Collection
• More listed in the Theatre Research Guide

Digital Primary Source Collections

• Eighteenth Century Drama: Censorship, Society and the Stage
• Performance Design Archive Online
• Shakespeare in Performance: Prompt Books from the Folger Shakespeare Library
• Shakespeare’s Globe Archive: Theatres, Players & Performance
• Theatre in Context 
• Victorian Popular Culture