Theater
General guide to print and online resources for theater studies
Encyclopedias
Cambridge Guide to American Theatre. by Call Number: Music REF PN2220.C35 1993ISBN: 0521401348Brief entries for people, places, plays, genres, design and technical subjects. Illustrated, with an extensive bibliography in the back.- International Dictionary of Theatre byCall Number: Music REF PN2035.I49 1992ISBN: 1558620958Volume 1 covers Plays, Volume 2 Playwrights, Volume 3 Actors, Directors and Designers. Each volume has lengthy articles with bibliographical references.
Oxford Dictionary of Plays by Call Number: Music REF PN1625.P38 2005ISBN: 0198604173Synopses and brief commentaries "on the 1,000 most significant plays of world theatre." Includes indexes of characters and playwrights.
An International Dictionary of Theatre Language by Call Number: Music REF PN2035.I5 1985ISBN: 0313229805Contains definitions to current, historical, and international theatrical terms.
Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre & Performance by Call Number: Music REF PN2035.O94 2003ISBN: 0198606729Articles on nearly all aspects of international theater history and performance, heavily cross-referenced. Longer articles have selected bibliographic references.
NTC's Dictionary of Theatre and Drama Terms by Call Number: Music REF PN2035.M63 1992ISBN: 9780844253459Basic guide to terms used in theater history and production.- Glossary of Technical Theatre Terms byOnline glossary of terms covering most aspects of theatrical production, but most useful for technical theater jargon.
Subject Headings
Historical Dictionaries of the Theater
This series provides background information for many different styles and periods of theater. It is a highly recommended starting place when researching a new topic, and provides a great overview of the style, period, or genre in question. A few examples are below
Historical Dictionary of African American Theater by
This second edition of Historical Dictionary of African American Theater reflects the rich history and representation of the black aesthetic and the significance of African American theater's history, fleeting present, and promise to the future. It celebrates nearly 200 years of black theater in the United States and the thousands of black theater artists across the country--identifying representative black theaters, playwrights, plays, actors, directors, and designers and chronicling their contributions to the field from the birth of black theater in 1816 to the present. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of African American Theater, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on actors, playwrights, plays, musicals, theatres, -directors, and designers. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know and more about African American Theater.
Call Number: Available ONLINEISBN: 1538117282Publication Date: 2018-11-09
Historical Dictionary of American Theater: Modernism by
This book covers the history of theater as well as the literature of America from 1880-1930. The years covered by this volume features the rise of the popular stage in America from the years following the end of the Civil War to the Golden Age of Broadway, with an emphasis on its practitioners, including such diverse figures as William Gillette, Mrs. Fiske, George M. Cohan, Maude Adams, David Belasco, George Abbott, Clyde Fitch, Eugene O'Neill, Texas Guinan, Robert Edmond Jones, Jeanne Eagels, Susan Glaspell, The Adlers and the Barrymores, Tallulah Bankhead, Philip Barry, Maxwell Anderson, Mae West, Elmer Rice, Laurette Taylor, Eva Le Gallienne, and a score of others. Entries abound on plays of all kinds, from melodrama to the newly-embraced realistic style, ethnic works (Irish, Yiddish, etc.), and such diverse forms as vaudeville, circus, minstrel shows, temperance plays, etc. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of American Theater: Modernism covers the history of modernist American Theatre through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 2,000 cross-referenced entries on actors and actresses, directors, playwrights, producers, genres, notable plays and theatres. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the American Theater in its greatest era.
Call Number: Available ONLINEISBN: 1538107856Publication Date: 2017-11-22
Historical Dictionary of Asian American Literature and Theater by
Asian American literature is one of the most recent forms of ethnic literature and is already becoming one of the most prominent, given the large number of writers, the growing ethnic population from the region, the general receptivity of this body of work, and the quality of the authors. In recent decades, there has been an exponential growth in their output and much Asian American literature has now achieved new levels of popular success and critical acclaim. Nurtured by rich and long literary traditions from the vast continent of Asia, this literature is poised between the ancient and the modern, between the East and West, and between the oral and the written. The Historical Dictionary of Asian American Literature and Theater covers the activities in this burgeoning field. First, its history is traced year by year from 1887 to the present, in a chronology, and the introduction provides a good overview. The most important section is the dictionary, with over 600 substantial and cross-referenced entries on authors, books, and genres as well as more general ones describing the historical background, cultural features, techniques and major theatres and clubs. More reading can be found through an extensive bibliography with general works and those on specific authors. The book is thus a good place to get started, or to expanded one's horizons, about a branch of American literature that can only grow in importance.
Call Number: Available ONLINEISBN: 9780810873940Publication Date: 2012-04-01
Historical Dictionary of French Theater by
The term "French theater" evokes most immediately the glories of the classical period and the peculiarities of the Theater of the Absurd. It has given us the works of Corneille, Racine, and Moliere. In the Romantic era there was Alexander Dumas and surrealist works of Alfred Jarry, and then the Theater of the Absurd erupted in rationalistic France with Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, and Jean-Paul Sartre. The Historical Dictionary of French Theater relates the history of the French theater through a chronology, introduction, bibliography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on authors, trends, genres, concepts, and literary and historical developments that played a central role in the evolution of French theater.
Call Number: Available ONLINEISBN: 9780810874510Publication Date: 2010-04-01
Historical Dictionary of German Theater by
The German-language theater is one of the most vibrant and generously endowed of any in the world. It boasts long and honored traditions that include world-renowned plays, playwrights, actors, directors, and designers, and several German theater artists have had an enormous impact on theater practice around the globe. Students continue to study German plays in dozens of languages, and every year scores of German plays are produced in a wide variety of non-German venues. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of German Theater covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 400 cross-referenced entries on directors, designers, producers, and movements such as Regietheater, "post-dramatic" approaches to theater production, the freie Szene of independent, non-subsidized groups, the role of increasingly massive government subsidies, and cities whose reputations as centers of innovation and excellence that have made the German-language theater one of the most vibrant anywhere on earth. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about German Theater.
Call Number: Available ONLINEISBN: 1442250194Publication Date: 2015-06-17
