Finding Plays or Reviews of Plays Research Guide

Summon

Finding plays in the Library Catalog

By Author or Title:

You can search by the author's name or by the title of the play. Remember to search by last name first for authors (e.g., Friel, Brian) and to omit initial articles for titles (e.g., Playboy of the Western World)

By Call Number:
The call number search can be a very effective way to browse through anthologies and collections of plays that have common characteristics. Search by CALL NUMBER using these classification numbers:

General Play Collections:

PN6111 and PN6112 Collections of plays in English
PN6120 Collections of plays arranged alphabetically by topic

American Play Collections:

PS623 and PS625 Collections of American plays
PS627 Collections of American plays arranged alphabetically by topic
PS628 Collections of American plays arranged alphabetically by ethnicity
PS628.W6 Collections of plays by American women
PS634 Collections of 20th-Century American plays

British Play Collections:
Search by CALL NUMBER in the catalog using classification numbers PR1243-PR1272.

By Genre:

Sometimes, searching by genre can be a quick way of finding similar items in MIDCAT. For example: play scripts, or plays.

By Subject:

If a play is about a person, event, or topic, search by SUBJECT using the name of the person, event, or topic and look for the subdivision -- Drama. For example:
Henry VIII, King of England, 1491-1547 -- Drama
World War, 1914-1918 -- Drama
Mafia -- United States -- Drama

It is also possible to browse through all the plays about people, events, and topics by doing a subject search on the single term Drama or Theater:

Drama or Theater

Other methods:

One-act plays
Interviews with playwrights can be a good source of information about plays. Try a KEYWORD SUBJECT search in Midcat for su dramatists and interviews

There are also a number of indexes to plays, including:

Play Index (online resource)
An Index to One-Act Plays PN1865 .L83
Ottemiller's Index to Plays in Collections Ref PN1655 .A1 O8
Smith and Kraus Monologue Index Ref PN2080 .S6 1999

Finding plays on the Internet

Dramatists Play Service - Play Finder
Dramatists Play Service, Inc. has grown steadily to become one of the premier play-licensing agencies in the English-speaking theatre. Offering an extensive list of titles, including a preponderance of the most significant American plays of the past half-century, Dramatists Play Service, Inc. works with thousands of theatres and supports the theatre's vital position in contemporary life.
Samuel French
Samuel French seeks out the world's best plays and makes them available to the widest range of producing groups. Sources of Samuel French's plays range from Broadway and England's West End to publication of unsolicited scripts submitted by unpublished authors.
Inter-Play
An on-line index to plays in collections, anthologies and periodicals.
Drama - Carnegie-Mellon
This site contains a collection of original plays and screenplays, criticism and links to other sites concerned with theatre. It publishes both classic and contemporary works, and would be delighted to consider your work if you'd care to submit it to their editors for review.
Internet Public Library - Theater Section
Dramatic literature performance, from a popular entertainment view, i.e. going to the theater, performers, shows, etc.
Federal Theatre Project Collection
This online presentation includes over 13,000 images of items selected from the Federal Theatre Project Collection at the Library of Congress. Featured here are stage and costume designs, still photographs, posters, and scripts for productions of Macbeth and The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus as staged by Orson Welles, and for Power, a topical drama of the period (over 3,000 images). Also included are 68 other playscripts (6,500 images) and 168 documents selected from the Federal Theatre Project Administrative Records(3,700 images). The Federal Theatre Project was one of five arts-related projects established during the first term of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt under the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
Complete Works of Shakespeare
The Web's first edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. This site has offered Shakespeare's plays and poetry to the Internet community since 1993.

Finding reviews of plays

First, identify which production(s) you are interested in:

go to the Internet Broadway Database and type in the name of the play
select the title to see its opening and revival dates, listing the director, cast, awards and other information
you can also search by author to see all productions of a given author's works, e.g., Euripides or Stoppard

To see newspaper reviews in their original context, including photographs:

before approx. 2000, go to ProQuest Historical Newspapers OR
after approx. 2000, go to InfoTrac Custom Newspapers then browse the publication titles to select the New York Times or other papers of interest
enter the title of the play in quotes
enter a date range up to a week or more before and after the date of the opening or revival to see previews etc.
The Times of London Digital Archive is also available from 1785 through 1985 for London openings. For better results, limit your search to Arts and Entertainment and Reviews.

Note: The following are print-only resources:

To see a variety of reprinted newspaper reviews, consult the New York Theatre Critics Reviews for the year of the production. PN2000 .N76 in Bound Periodicals, lower level.
The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, AI3 .R48 in the Reference Collection, Main Level can lead you to more extensive reviews found in popular magazines.