• Thematic Guide to Modern Drama.
• The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama

• Plays and Theatre

• The Cambridge Guide to Theatre
• The Oxford Dictionary of Plays
• The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre & Performance

Visuals

Websites, Image Databases and More

• the Playbill Vault.
• John Johnson Collection:  An Archive of Printed Ephemera (includes historical playbills)

• ARTStor
• Library of Congress Performing Arts Encyclopedia
• Library of Congress American Memory Project
• New York Public Library  digital collections

Streaming Videos

• Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, University of Oxford (Podcasts and Videos section)
• The BBC Shakespeare Plays
• BroadwayHD
• Dance in Video
• Digital Theatre (live performance by leading British theatre companies)
• Films from Kanopy
• Filmmakers Library Online (Award-winning documentaries)
• Opera in video
• PBS Video Collection

• **see also, Finding Videos

• American Society for Theatre Research
• College Theatre Guide -- Association for Theatre in Higher Education
• The Worldwide Wide Web Virtual Library: Theatre and Drama

Evaluating Information

I. JumboSearch for Books   

Tip: For production history of a play (performance/stage history) -- an account of significant productions or adaptations of a theatrical work), try these patterns of searches:

 

• Sophocles and "dramatic production"
• Antigone and "stage history"
•  "Romeo and Juliet" and adaptations

Sample findings:

• Antigone on the contemporary world stage
• Vision and stagecraft in Sophocles
• Shakespeare and the American musical

 

Note: Worldwide Libraries (also known as WorldCat is still a better place to get a fuller picture of  books on a topic.)

 

**Check the Boston Public Library's catalog for eBooks (and  sign up for a BPL eCard , Tufts students and faculty eligible)

** "Digital books" on Internet Archive

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II. Scholarly and Trade Journal Articles

• MLA ( for drama criticism & theater history)
• Performing Arts Periodicals Database
  (for reception:
      -- "dramatic criticism" in Scholarly journals
      -- "theatre reviews" in popular press and trade publications.)
• JSTOR
• Project Muse

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More Sources For Current Production Reviews

Magazines, Newspapers and the Companies' Websites

• Access World News (rich U.S. regional news)
• Factiva (more international coverage)
• More

 

• Internet Broadway Database
• the Lortel Archive (Off-Broadway)
• Ticketmaster

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For past theatre reviews

Historical Magazines and Newspapers

• African American Periodicals1825-1995
• American Periodicals (1740 - 1940)
• British Periodicals (1680s - 1930s)
• New York Times Online Archive (1851 - three years before the current date)
• Times of London (1785 - 1985)