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This page contains resources for anyone interested in theatre, acting, and performance. Click on each title to learn more.
eBooks
The Oxford Companion to American Theatre
Author: Gerald Bordman, Thomas S. Hischak, and Gerald Bordman
Description: First published in 1984, Gerald Bordman's Oxford Companion to American Theatre is the standard one-volume source on our national theatre. Critics have hailed its "wealth of authoritative information" (Back Stage), its "fascinating picture of the volatile American stage" (The Guardian), and its "well-chosen, illuminating facts" (Newsday).Now thoroughly revised, this distinguished volume once again provides an up-to-date guide to the American stage from its beginnings to the present. Completely updated by theater professor Thomas Hischak, the volume includes playwrights, plays, actors, directors, producers, songwriters, famous playhouses, dramatic movements, and much more. The book covers not only classic works (such as Death of a Salesman) but also many commercially successful plays (such as Getting Gertie's Garter), plus entries on foreign figures that have influenced our dramatic development (from Shakespeare to Beckett and Pinter). New entries include recent plays such as Angels in America and Six Degrees of Separation, performers such as Eric Bogosian and Bill Irwin, playwrights like David Henry Hwang and Wendy Wasserstein, and relevant developments and issues including AIDS in American theatre, theatrical producing by Disney, and the rise in solo performance.Accessible and authoritative, this valuable A-Z reference is ideal not only for students and scholars of theater, but everyone with a passion for the stage.
American Musical Theater : A Chronicle
Author: Gerald Bordman
Description: Gerald Bordman's American Musical Theatre has become a landmark book since its original publication in 1978. In this third edition, he offers authoritative summaries on the general artistic trends and developments for each season on musical comedy, operetta, revues, and the one-man and one-woman shows from the first musical to the 1999/2000 season. With detailed show, song, and people indexes, Bordman provides a running commentary and assessment as well as providing the basic facts about each production.
Greek Tragic Theatre
Author: Rush Rehm
Description: Emphasizing the political nature of Greek tragedy, as theatre of, by and for the polis, Rush Rehm characterizes Athens as a performance culture; one in which the theatre stood alongside other public forums as a place to confront matters of import. In treating the various social, religious and practical aspects of tragic production, he shows how these elements promoted a vision of the theatre as integral to the life of the city - a theatre focussed on the audience.
Drafting for the Theatre
Author: Dennis Dorn and Mark Shanda
Description: In this newly revised second edition, veteran stage designers and technical directors Dennis Dorn and Mark Shanda introduce industry-standard drafting and designing practices with step-by-step discussions, illustrations, worksheets, and problems to help students develop and refine drafting and other related skills needed for entertainment set production work. By incorporating the foundational principles of both hand- and computer-drafting approaches throughout the entire book, the authors illustrate how to create clear and detailed drawings that advance the production process. Early chapters focus on the basics of geometric constructions, orthographic techniques, soft-line sketching applications, lettering, and dimensioning. Later chapters discuss real-life applications of production drawing and ancillary skills such as time and material estimation and shop-drawing nomenclature. Two chapters detail a series of design and shop drawings required to mount a specific design project, providing a guided path through both phases of the design/construction process. Most chapters conclude with one or more worksheets or problems that provide readers with an opportunity to test their understanding of the material presented. The authors' discussion of universal CAD principles throughout the manuscript provides a valuable foundation that can be used in any computer-based design, regardless of the software. Dorn and Shanda treat the computer as another drawing tool, like the pencil or T-square, but one that can help a knowledgeable drafter potentially increase personal productivity and accuracy when compared to traditional hand-drafting techniques. Drafting for the Theatre, second edition assembles in one book all the principal types of drawings, techniques, and conventional wisdom necessary for the production of scenic drafting, design, and shop drawings. It is richly illustrated with numerous production examples and is fully indexed to assist students and technicians in finding important information. It is structured to support a college-level course in drafting, but will also serve as a handy reference for the working theatre professional.
Making Theatre : From Text to Performance
Author: Peter Mudford
Description:The reality of a play is in its performance. Making Theatre focuses on the processes by which performance is realized, analyzing three major areas: "Words" and the interpretation of text; "Vision" including scenery, costume and lighting; and "Music" which illustrates the importance of music in all stage action.The forms of theater covered include straight drama, the musical and opera. Taking productions well-known on both sides of the Atlantic, Peter Mudford examines plays by Shakespeare, Chekhov, Pirandello, Beckett, Pinter, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and David Mamet; musicals by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim; and operas by Verdi, Wagner and Berg.This account of what makes theater important and how it works will be invaluable to teachers and students of drama and performance, as well as all those interested in theater as art.
A Teen Drama Student's Guide to Laying the Foundation for a Successful Acting Career
Author: Debbie Lamedman
Description: A Teen Drama Student’s Guide to Laying a Foundation for a Successful Acting Career provides invaluable information on a variety of different colleges, universities, and programs. It features quotes from theater faculty and professionals explaining what they look for during the audition process.
Acting Lions : Unleash Your Craft In Today's Lightning Fast World of Film, Television and Theatre
Author: Penny Templeton
Description: Acting has drastically changed from the days of Stanislavsky and the Group Theatre, when techniques were geared for the actor who would rehearse for 5 or 6 months, or more. Gradually, the business began speeding up, as television and film work increased and theatre rehearsals went from 8 weeks to 6 weeks, down to the current 4 weeks.What didn't evolve was the way the techniques (the craft) were presented and used by the actor. I discovered that because of the fast paced industry, actors were increasingly abandoning their craft and acting by the seat of their pants. This has led to playing the words and to work that, though real and believable, is in many cases uninspiring because it lacks depth, thought, and inspiration. I personally thought the craft needed to catch up! One of the misconceptions is that the craft of acting is only for theatre. The fact is that today, actors go from theatre to film to television; therefore the craft has to go with them. TodayÆs actor is under constant pressure to deliver the goods faster and faster. They are constantly under fire in what often seems like hostile conditions in enemy territory. What should be a collaborative effort can feel like a battle just to survive. How do actors make themselves totally vulnerable to access the deepest emotions while coming under fire from all over the set? Actors need a bulletproof vest -- a strong and flexible acting technique that works for them, day in and day out, in this act fast world.My entire career as an acting coach and teacher has been about developing and giving actors that technique. It began with my coaching Daytime actors on a 75 page full length play every day, and continues as I work with actors in Film, Television, and Theatre. I coach them and they keep me up date with good intel on what is happening in the trenches of the set. This helps keep me current and evolving. My actors are always ready to act under fire. They can face the challenge of every acting situation without fear because they are armed with the bulletproof vest of their technique. In fact, they relish it!
Training of the American Actor
Author: Arthur Bartow
Description: Successful acting must reflect a society’s current beliefs. The men and women who developed each new technique were convinced that previous methods were not equal to the full challenges of their time and place, and the techniques in this book have been adapted to current needs in order to continue to be successful methods for training actors. The actor’s journey is an individual one, and the actor seeks a form, or a variety of forms, of training that will assist in unlocking his own creative gifts of expression.—from the introduction The first comprehensive survey and study of the major techniques developed by and for the American actor over the past 60 years. Each of the 10 disciplines included is described in detail by one of today’s foremost practitioners.
Whose Improv Is It Anyway? Beyond Second City
Author: Amy E. Seham
Description: On both sides of the stage improv-comedy's popularity has increased exponentially throughout the 1980s and '90s and into the new millennium. Presto! An original song is created out of thin air. With nothing but a suggestion from the audience, daring young improvisers working without a net or a script create hilarious characters, sketches, and songs. Thrilled by the danger, the immediacy, and the virtuosity of improv-comedy, spectators laugh and cheer. American improv-comedy burst onto the scene in the 1950s with Chicago's the Compass Players (best known for the brilliant comedy duo Mike Nichols and Elaine May) and the Second City, which launched the careers of many popular comedians, including Gilda Radner, John Belushi, and Mike Myers. Chicago continues to be a mecca for young performers who travel from faraway places to study improv. At the same time, the techniques of Chicago improv have infiltrated classrooms, workshops, rehearsals, and comedy clubs across North and South America, Europe, Australia, and Japan. Improv's influence is increasingly evident in contemporary films and in interactive entertainment on the internet. Drawing on the experiences of working improvisers, Whose Improv Is It Anyway? provides a never-before-published account of developments beyond Second City's mainstream approach to the genre. This fascinating history chronicles the origins of "the Harold," a sophisticated new "long-form" style of improv developed in the '80s at ImprovOlympic, and details the importance and pitfalls of ComedySports. Here also is a backstage glimpse at the Annoyance Theatre, best known on the national scene for its production of The Real Live Brady Bunch. Readers will get the scoop on the recent work of players who, feeling excluded by early improv's "white guys in ties," created such independent groups as the Free Associates and the African American troupe Oui Be Negroes. There is far more to the art of improv than may be suggested by the sketches on Saturday Night Live or the games on Whose Line Is It Anyway? This history, an insider's look at the evolution of improv-comedy in Chicago, reveals the struggles, the laughter, and the ideals of mutual support, freedom, and openness that have inspired many performers. It explores the power games, the gender inequities, and the racial tensions that can emerge in improvised performance, and it shares the techniques and strategies veteran players use to combat these problems. Improv art is revealed to be an art of compromise, a fragile negotiation between the poles of process and product. The result, as shown here, can be exciting, shimmering, magical, and not exclusively the property of any troupe or actor. Amy E. Seham is an assistant professor of theater and dance at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. In Connecticut she has served as artistic director of Performance Studio in New Haven and of Free Shakespeare on the Green in New Haven and Stamford.
African Drama and Performance
Author: John Conteh-Morgan and Tejumola Olaniyan
African Drama and Performance is a collection of innovative and wide-ranging essays that bring conceptually fresh perspectives, from both renowned and emerging voices, to the study of drama, theatre, and performance in Africa. Topics range from studies of major dramatic authors and formal literary dramas to improvisational theatre and popular video films. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commissions are analyzed as a kind of social performance, and aspects of African performance in the diaspora are also considered. This dynamic volume underscores theatre's role in postcolonial society and politics and reexamines performance as a form of high art and everyday social ritual. Contributors are Akin Adesokan, Daniel Avorgbedor, Karin Barber, Nicholas Brown, Catherine Cole, John Conteh-Morgan, Johannes Fabian, Joachim Fiebach, Marie-José Hourantier, Loren Kruger, Pius Ngandu Nkashama, Isidore Okpewho, Tejumola Olaniyan, Ato Quayson, Sandra L. Richards, Wole Soyinka, Dominic Thomas, and Bob W. White.
Making Theatre : From Text to Performance
Author: Peter Mudford
The reality of a play is in its performance. Making Theatre focuses on the processes by which performance is realized, analyzing three major areas: "Words" and the interpretation of text; "Vision" including scenery, costume and lighting; and "Music" which illustrates the importance of music in all stage action.The forms of theater covered include straight drama, the musical and opera. Taking productions well-known on both sides of the Atlantic, Peter Mudford examines plays by Shakespeare, Chekhov, Pirandello, Beckett, Pinter, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and David Mamet; musicals by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim; and operas by Verdi, Wagner and Berg.This account of what makes theater important and how it works will be invaluable to teachers and students of drama and performance, as well as all those interested in theater as art.
The One-Act Play Companion : A Guide to Plays, Playwrights and Performance
Author: Colin Dolley and Rex Walford
Surveying the work of over 250 playwrights, this guide covers multiple styles, nationalities and periods. Guidance on performing and staging one-act plays is also covered, as well as contact information and where to apply for performance rights. It includes a chapter introducing the history of the one-act play rounds.
Magazines
Live Design
Publisher: Informa
Full text coverage Dec 2005 (Vol. 39, no. 12) - Mar 2009 (Vol. 43, no. 3)
Description: Live Design is the must-read creative and technical resource for live entertainment professionals in lighting, sound, staging, and projection. Live Design provides designers, programmers, and technicians with tips and trends, news and reviews of the latest gear, reports from the field, and industry viewpoint and commentary.
Stage Directions
Publisher: Timeless Communications, Corp.
Full text coverage Jan 2001 (Vol. 14, no. 1) - present
Description: Stage Directions covers the art, craft, and technology behind making theater. Theatre involves more than just what appears onstage. People interested in theatre want to know and learn about lighting, sound, projection, staging, special effects, technical direction, makeup, facility management, and much, much more. That is why Stage Directions’ is dedicated to all aspects of the art & technology of making theatre. We provide information on everything people interested in theatre want to know about.
American Theatre
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group, Inc.
Full text coverage Jan 1994 (Vol. 11, no. 1) - present
Description: American Theatre provides news, features, artist interviews, and editorials about theatre in the US and abroad.
Academic Journals
New Theatre Quarterly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Peer reviewed.
Full text coverage Feb 2002 (Vol. 18, no. 69) - present (delayed 1 year)
Description: New Theatre Quarterly provides a vital international forum where theatrical scholarship and practice can meet and where prevailing dramatic assumptions can be subjected to vigorous critical questioning. It shows that theatre history has a contemporary relevance, that theatre studies need a methodology and that theatre criticism needs a language. The journal publishes news, analysis and debate within the field of theatre studies.
Theatre Journal
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Peer reviewed.
Full text coverage Mar 1996 (Vol. 48, no. 1) - present (delayed 1 year)
Description: For seven decades, Theatre Journal's broad array of scholarly articles and reviews has earned it an international reputation as one of the most authoritative and useful publications of theatre studies available today. Drawing contributions from noted practitioners and scholars, Theatre Journal features social and historical studies, production reviews, and theoretical inquiries that analyze dramatic texts and production. Theatre Journal is an official publication of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE).
Theatre Survey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Peer reviewed.
Full text coverage May 2001 (Vol. 42, no. 1) - present (delayed 1 year)
Description: Theatre Survey is chartered by the American Society for Theatre Research as a theatre history journal. Its theatrical and historical orientations are broadly conceived. Performance-centered and historiographic studies from all points across the historical, cultural, and methodological spectra are welcome. Recent issues have included an article on the early professional deaf theatre in post-Stalinist Soviet Union, a study of the gestural vocabulary found in surviving images of early commedia dell'arte, a philosophical treatise by Alan Badiou, and an essay on the impact of neoliberalism—from the classroom to the department to the “global university”—that suggests how theatre and performance scholars might approach the political difficulties currently threatening the mission of higher education.
Theatre Topics
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Peer reviewed.
Full text coverage Mar 2003 (Vol. 13, no. 1) - present (delayed 1 year)
Description: The first theatre publication devoted to issues of concern to practitioners, Theatre Topics focuses on performance at the border of theory and practice. Concise and timely articles on a broad array of subjects such as dramaturgy, applied theatre, and pedagogy keep readers informed of the latest developments on the stage and in the classroom. The journal's audience includes scholars and students of theatre, educators, members of theatre associations, actors, directors, playwrights, dramaturgs, designers, and theatre enthusiasts. Theatre Topics is an official publication of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE). "An excellent addition to the literature of drama." -Bill Katz, Library Journal
Database Resources
ProQuest
Britannica
Websites
Global Performing Arts Database : GloPAD (Global Performing Arts Database) records include authoritative, detailed, multilingual descriptions of digital images, texts, video clips, sound recordings, and complex media objects related to the performing arts around the world, plus information about related pieces, productions, performers, and creators.
Improv Encyclopedia : Improv Encyclopedia is the largest collection or resources for improvization theater on the web. Here you will find tons of stuff related to improvization theatre, also known as 'improv' or 'impro'.
Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama : The Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (the APGRD) is a research project based in the Classics Faculty at the University of Oxford. It investigates the performance of ancient texts from Greek tragedy to Roman epic, in any medium and any period, from stage to screen, from antiquity to the present day.
The Billy Rose Theatre Division of The New York Public Library : The Billy Rose Theatre Division of The New York Public Library is one of the largest and most comprehensive archives devoted to the theatrical arts. Encompassing dramatic performance in all its diversity, the division is an indispensable resource for artists, writers, researchers, scholars, students, and the general public.
Global Shakespeares : The Global Shakespeares Video & Performance Archive is a collaborative project providing online access to performances of Shakespeare from many parts of the world as well as essays and metadata provided by scholars and educators in the field. The idea that Shakespeare is a global author has taken many forms since the building of the Globe playhouse. Our work honors the fact and demonstrates the diversity of the world-wide reception and production of Shakespeare’s plays in ways that we hope will nourish the remarkable array of new forms of cultural exchange that the digital age has made possible. Global Shakespeares is a participatory multi-centric networked model that offers wide access to international performances that are changing how we understand Shakespeare’s plays and the world.
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