Cowles Library: Theatre Arts: Plays

Theater and Drama Crash Course Videos

This series of YouTube videos by Crash Course focuses on theater's history, technology, and its overall cultural significance. There are more than 50 videos in the series, covering everything from Greek and Roman theater to Broadway musicals.

Scripts and Performances

New Play Exchange This link opens in a new window
The world's largest digital library of scripts by living writers.
The New Play Exchange ® (NPX) is the world's largest digital library of scripts by living writers. The NPX, a National New Play Network program, is flipping the script on the ways in which new work is shared and discovered. National New Play Network (NNPN) is an alliance of professional theaters that collaborate in innovative ways to develop, produce, and extend the life of new plays.
Academic Video Online (AVON) This link opens in a new window
AVON has hundreds of performance-related streaming videos, including actor interviews, performances, workshops, and more. You can search for specific actor names or performances, or use subject terms like "acting," "theatre," or "performing arts."

Shakespeare's Globe Archive
This primary source collection of documents offers insights into the performance practice in the particular space of the reconstructed Globe Theatre. It details the way in which the theatre was constructed as a place of radical experiment. It documents over 200 performances through prompt books, wardrobe notes, programmes, publicity material, annual reports, show reports, photographs and architectural plans.
American Drama
Cowles Library has hundreds of scripts in our collection. This link provides results categorized as American Drama, but you can also search by play title or playwright.
Rothmayer Play Collection
Cowles Library has hundreds of scripts, including many one-act plays, donated by Michael Rothmayer of the Theatre Arts Department.
Internet Broadway Database
The Internet Broadway Database (IBDB) is the official database for Broadway theatre information. IBDB provides records of productions from the beginnings of New York theatre until today, including theaters, performers, and statistics for each production.

Pre-20th Century

Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
Contains thousands of scripts printed throughout England in the eighteenth century. Search for terms like "drama," "theater," or "musical theater."
Early English Books Online (Text Creation Partnership) This link opens in a new window
Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700 - from the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War.

Shakespeare in Performance
This primary source collection contains rare and unique prompt books from the world-famous Folger Shakespeare Library. These prompt books tell the story of Shakespeare’s plays as they were performed in theatres throughout Great Britain, the United States and internationally, between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries.

Theatre Arts: Plays

Theater and Drama Crash Course Videos

Scripts and Performances

Pre-20th Century

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