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Introduction
Welcome to the University of Miami Libraries Guide to Theatre Arts resources. The purpose of the guide is to help you navigate through the many Theatre Arts resources available to you through the University of Miami Libraries system and beyond. If you need further assistance during your research process please contact the Theatre Arts librarian, via email or phone for individual consultation.
Library Collection
The Library has a strong collection of plays published separately and in anthologies to support the student actor. Contemporary plays, as well as works from all periods of literature are covered. The craft of theatre is well represented by books and videos on acting, set design and lighting, and costume. Art history and architecture are especially valuable resources for faculty and students in this program as well.
Research Assistance
Please contact the Theatre Arts Librarian for more information about resources in Theatre Arts or to make an appointment for in-depth research assistance. For general inquiries and assistance, call or visit the Research Service Point in the Learning Commons on the first floor of the Otto G. Richter Library (305-284-4722). You can also email a reference librarian through our Ask A Librarian service.
Reference: Print and Online
- Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre
Music Library Reference ML102.M88 G3 2001 - Milileux Costume Site
Online directory of vendors, events, tutorials and more concerning costuming. - Music and Performing Arts from Alexander Street
Music and Performing Arts consists of multiple music and performing arts databases, including American Song, Classical Music Library, Classical Scores Library, Dance in Video, Jazz Music Library, Popular Music Library, Contemporary World Music, and Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries. - Oxford Companion to the American Musical
The Oxford Companion to the American Musical is an engaging and authoritative reference for this highly popular genre, covering Broadway, Hollywood, and television in one volume. With more than two thousand entries, this book offers a wealth of information on musicals, performers, composers, lyricists, producers, choreographers, and much more. - Oxford Companion to American Theatre
First published in 1984, Gerald Bordman's Oxford Companion to American Theatre is the standard one-volume source on American theatre. - Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre & Performance
- Oxford Reference Online: Performing Arts
Browse and search a variety of well-researched reference sources on the performing arts. - Performing Arts Encyclopedia
The Performing Arts Encyclopedia is a guide to performing arts resources at the Library of Congress. The Encyclopedia provides access to digitized scores, sheet music, audio reordings, films, photographs, and other materials. - Performing Arts in America, 1875-1923
Performing Arts in America, 1875-1923, created by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, presents a look at the world of music, theater, and dance in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The site features and audio and includes sheet music, photographs, news clippings, and publicity posters.
Streaming Video Resources
- Digital Theatre + Plus
Digital Theatre+ is the world’s leading educational platform for English and the Performing Arts, providing students with access to 600+ theatre productions and educational resources. Digital Theatre+ collaborates with renowned theatre companies, actors and creatives to capture live performances in stunning quality and bring you insights from behind the scenes. - National Theatre Collection 1 and 2
Now complete and consisting of 30 videos, National Theatre Collection 1 pulls from 10 years of NT Live broadcasts as well as high-quality recordings never previously seen outside of the NT's Archive to make this rich body of work available to the widest possible audience. National Theatre Collection 2 has added a further 20 videos. - Ambrose Video
Ambrose Video provides streaming educational content in a variety of disciplines. The University of Miami currently has access to over 30 videos in the BBC Shakespeare Play collection and the entire Long Search series, a discussion of the basic beliefs of the world's major religions. - Feature Films for Education
Feature Films for Education is a digital video streaming platform that offers hundreds of full-length feature films for educational purposes; focusing on both current and hard-to-find titles, the collection includes literary adaptions, blockbusters, classics, foreign films, and more. Recommend Chrome browser. - Swank Digital Campus
Streaming videos primarily of classic and modern Hollywood films. Additional films may be available upon request by faculty for course reserves.
Start here!
- ProQuest Research Library
ProQuest Research Library provides in-depth coverage of the top 150 core academic subject, including 5,060 titles -over 3,600 in full text- from 1971 forward. It features a highly-respected, diversified mix of scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, and newspapers. - Digital Theatre + Plus
Digital Theatre+ is the world’s leading educational platform for English and the Performing Arts, providing students with access to 600+ theatre productions and educational resources. Digital Theatre+ collaborates with renowned theatre companies, actors and creatives to capture live performances in stunning quality and bring you insights from behind the scenes. - New Play Exchange
The New Play Exchange is the world’s largest digital library of scripts by living writers. Designed and built with the needs of the entire new play sector in mind, serving writers, producers, directors, artistic directors, literary managers, dramaturgs, publishers, agents, actors, professors, students, and even fans of the theater. - National Theatre Collection 1 and 2
Now complete and consisting of 30 videos, National Theatre Collection 1 pulls from 10 years of NT Live broadcasts as well as high-quality recordings never previously seen outside of the NT's Archive to make this rich body of work available to the widest possible audience. National Theatre Collection 2 has added a further 20 videos. - Humanities Full Text (H.W. Wilson)
Wilson Humanities Full-Text indexes more than 300 key humanities journals. Abstracts of journal articles are included from the spring of 1994; selected full-text coverage began in January 1995. - Humanities International Index
Humanities International Index is a database covering journals, books and other important reference sources in the humanities. Produced by Whitston Publishing (an imprint of EBSCO Publishing), Humanities International Index provides cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for more than 2,100 journals and contains more than 2.47 million records. - Arts and Humanities Citation Index
International coverage of more than 1,150 leading arts and humanities journals as well as selective coverage from leading science and social sciences journals. - Film & Television Literature Index
Bibliographic database that provides indexing for more than 600 publications. Film & Television Literature Index is an index to film and television literature. It is a bibliographic database that provides cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for more than 300 publications, and selected coverage of 300 more. The database has been designed for use by a diverse audience that includes film scholars, college students, and general viewers. - Play Index (H.W. Wilson)
Play Index enables users to search some 44,000 plays published individually or in collections from 1949 to the present. The database covers a wide range of plays written or translated into English, including one-act plays, pageants, radio and television plays, and classic drama.
Scenes/Monologues in the UM Catalog
Find monologues or scenes the UM Libraries' catalog
To find scenes do a keyword search using the phrase "actor's scenes".To find monologues do a keyword search on "monolog*", The truncation symbol * searches for plural forms or variant spellings , i.e., monologues.
Use the keyword/phrase search 'actor's scenes' or 'scenes and actors', or 'monolog*'. Use the truncation symbol * after 'monolog' to get plural or variant spellings, i.e. 'monologues'.
Still can't find what you're looking for? Try WorldCat, a cooperative catalog of many US and international libraries. If we don't have it at UM, try requesting it through Interlibrary Loan.
Find plays in our catalog!
Databases
- New Play Exchange
The New Play Exchange is the world’s largest digital library of scripts by living writers. Designed and built with the needs of the entire new play sector in mind, serving writers, producers, directors, artistic directors, literary managers, dramaturgs, publishers, agents, actors, professors, students, and even fans of the theater. - Play Index (H.W. Wilson)
Play Index enables users to search some 44,000 plays published individually or in collections from 1949 to the present. The database covers a wide range of plays written or translated into English, including one-act plays, pageants, radio and television plays, and classic drama. - Ambrose Video
Ambrose Video provides streaming educational content in a variety of disciplines. The University of Miami currently has access to over 30 videos in the BBC Shakespeare Play collection and the entire Long Search series, a discussion of the basic beliefs of the world's major religions. - Dramatists Play Service
Find plays based on number of characters, gender, and theme. Then, search for the plays by title in the Libraries' catalog. - InterPlay
A tool for finding plays published in collections.
WorldCat: Expand your search
Other sources
- ProQuest Research Library
- Literature Resource Center
- Literature Criticism Online
- Film & Television Literature Index
- Gale Literary Index
Reviews
- Digital Theatre + Plus
Digital Theatre+ is the world’s leading educational platform for English and the Performing Arts, providing students with access to 600+ theatre productions and educational resources. Digital Theatre+ collaborates with renowned theatre companies, actors and creatives to capture live performances in stunning quality and bring you insights from behind the scenes. - Global Newsstream (ProQuest)
Global Newsstream covers national and leading regional newspapers including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA TODAY, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Barron's, The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Washington Post. International coverage includes The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, Jerusalem Post, and El Pais. - New York Theatre Critics' Reviews
1940-1996 (continued by National Theatre Critics' Reviews) - National Theatre Critics' Reviews
- AisleSay
zine concentrating on the New York area threatre - New York Times via ProQuest (1980-Current)
Provides national and international news, opinion and commentary. - NewsBank Full Text Newspapers
Provides full-text information and perspectives from over 1400 U.S. and over 1200 international sources. Each source has its own distinctive focus offering diverse viewpoints on local, regional and world issues. - Nexis Uni
Nexis Uni™ features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources from LexisNexis®—including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790—with an intuitive interface that offers quick discovery across all content types, personalization features such as Alerts and saved searches and a collaborative workspace with shared folders and annotated documents. - Playbill Online
Extensive information on current productions - Times Online (London)
Searchable archive of Stage reviews