Find Playscripts, playbills and more
BU Databases
-
Asian American Drama This link opens in a new window
Asian American Drama contains plays by writers of Japanese, Filipino, Vietnamese, and Chinese descent; and of Hawaiian, Indian, Thai, Korean, Persian, and Malaysian ancestry. Also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays.
-
Black Drama: African, African American, and Diaspora This link opens in a new window
Black Drama: Second Edition contains plays, including previously unpublished or unperformed ones, by more than 200 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries.
-
Early English Books Online This link opens in a new window
Contains 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
-
Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive digital collection that aims to include every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas, between 1701 and 1800. Consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera.
-
Latino Literature: Poetry, Drama, and Fiction This link opens in a new windowLatino Literature: Poetry, Drama, and Fiction includes more than 100,000 pages of poetry, short fiction, novels, and more than 450 plays. Nearly all of the content is in copyright, and most of the other items are long out of print or have never before been published. The collection also supports the study of American history, ethnic diversity, immigrations issues, and political history.
-
Literature Online This link opens in a new windowDrama collections include American Drama (1714–1915) and English Drama (late 13th to early 20th century).
-
North American Indian Drama This link opens in a new windowIncludes plays by American Indian and First Nation playwrights of the 20th century, information about the plays and their production, and biographical data. Also includes issues of the Native Playwrights' Newsletter.
-
North American Women's Drama This link opens in a new window
North American Women's Drama includes the texts of plays, and information on productions, theaters, and production companies.
-
Theatre in Context Collection This link opens in a new windowWorks by American, European, Asian, and other worldwide dramatists from the past several centuries. In addition to performances, includes documentaries and interviews about theatre, discussing the history of theatre, acting methods, pioneering dramatists and actors, and more.
-
Twentieth Century North American Drama This link opens in a new window
Twentieth Century North American Drama contains 2,000 plays—along with detailed information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more—from the late 1800s to the present by more than 300 playwrights from North America.
Free online resources
-
Dramatists Play Service, Inc. (DPS)A major publisherand licenser of plays. Use the Playfinder feature to find availability and information about play scripts (librettos), scores, and other publications. Items are for sale but may also be available through interlibrary loan.
-
PlayscriptsPlayscripts is also the creator of Findaplay.com, a free service for locating plays in the catalogs of all major play publishers.
-
Internet Broadway DatabaseIBDB (Internet Broadway Database) archive is the official database for Broadway theatre information. IBDB provides records of productions from the beginnings of New York theatre until today. IBDB provides a comprehensive database of shows produced on Broadway, including all "title page" information about each production.
-
Internet Off-Broadway Database (Lortel Archives)Spectra provides a new digital home to discover every level of theater, all in one place! As a new partner of the Lucille Lortel Theatre, we are now offering the entire theatrical database previously held by iobdb.com.
-
Inter-PlayIndex to plays included in anthologies or collected works.
Monologues & Auditions
-
Soliloquy! The Shakespeare Monologues
by
Location: Mugar Stacks PR2771 .E15 1988Publication Date: 2000Over 175 of Shakespeare's finest and most performable monologues taken from all thirty-seven plays are here in two easy-to-use volumes (Men and Women). Selections travel the entire spectrum of the great dramatist's vision, from comedies, wit and romances, to tragedies, pathos and histories. -
The Methuen Book of Contemporary Monologues for Men
by
Location: Mugar Stacks PN2080 .M4775 2003Publication Date: 2003 -
Contemporary Monologues for Women
by
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2014In this volume of the Good Audition Guides, you'll find fifty fantastic speeches for women, all written since the year 2000, by some of our most exciting dramatic voices. -
Classical Monologues: from Aeschylus to Bernard Shaw
by
Location: Mugar Stacks PN2080 .C58 2002Publication Date: 2002Sure to become a mainstay of any actor's shelf, Applause is pleased to present the first two volumes of Leon Katz's monumental monologue collection. Covering the full scope of Western Drama, from the Greeks to the 20th Century, these two volumes contain over 250 monologues from sources other than Shakespeare's plays. -
Blackeyed: plays and monologues
by
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2015Blackeyed is a collection of plays and monologues. The topics covered in the book include housing and foreclosure, suicide, assault, mental health, the Black male experience, and more. The book intersects with critical race theory because the majority of this work positions race at the center of the experiences of the fictional or fictionalized characters.
-
Get the Callback: the art of auditioning for musical theatre
by
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2016In this second edition of Get the Callback: The Art of Auditioning for Musical Theatre, Jonathan Flom provides practical advice on the many facets of preparation, including selection of songs and monologues to suit your voice and the audition, organizing and arranging your music, working with the accompanist, and presenting yourself to the casting team. -
Musical Theatre Auditions and Casting: A Performer's Guide Viewed from Both Sides of the Audition Table
by
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2014Neil Rutherford has seen thousands of hopefuls audition over the years. Uniquely, he also understands what it is like to audition from his years as a professional actor in musical theatre.This book provides a unique perspective on the musical theatre audition process and how to improve the chances of landing a role. -
The Casting Handbook : For Film and Theatre Makers
by
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2013Casting is a crucial creative element of any production - and yet the craft and skills needed to put together a successful and exciting cast are often overlooked. The Casting Handbook explains the casting process from beginning to end and covers everything producers and directors needs to know - as well as proving a fascinating and illuminating read for actors.
Featured Anthologies
-
Contemporary Plays by African American Women
by
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2015African American women have increasingly begun to see their plays performed from regional stages to Broadway. Yet many of these artists still struggle to gain attention. In this volume, Sandra Adell draws from the vital wellspring of works created by African American women in the twenty-first century to present ten plays by both prominent and up-and-coming writers. -
Theatre of the Avant-Garde, 1950-2000: A Critical Anthology
by
Location: Mugar Stacks PN6112 .T43 2011 and OnlinePublication Date: 2011This critical anthology assembles an international selection of influential avant-garde plays from the second half of the twentieth century. Supplemented by essays by major theater practitioners, the book approaches the recent avant-garde as a non-linear, pluralistic phenomenon, includes collaborative constructed scripts, and highlights the complex dynamic between avant-garde text and performance. -
The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Drama
by
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2014This anthology is the first to survey the full range of modern Japanese drama and make available Japan's best and most representative twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century works in one volume. It opens with a comprehensive introduction to Meiji-period drama and follows with six chronological sections: "The Age of Taisho Drama"; The Tsukiji Little Theater and Its Aftermath"; "Wartime and Postwar Drama"; "The 1960s and Underground Theater"; "The 1980s and Beyond"; and "Popular Theater," providing a complete history of modern Japanese theater for students, scholars, instructors, and dramatists. -
Seven Contemporary Plays from the Korean Diaspora in the Americas
by
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2012Showcasing the dynamism of contemporary Korean diasporic theater, this anthology features seven plays by second-generation Korean diasporic writers from the United States, Canada, and Chile. By bringing the plays together in this collection, Esther Kim Lee highlights the themes and styles that have enlivened Korean diasporic theater in the Americas since the 1990s. -
Short Arabic Plays: An Anthology
Location: Mugar Stacks PJ7694.E5 S56 2003Publication Date: 2004-09-01It is only in fairly recent times that Arab writers have turned their hands to the theater. This collection of nineteen short plays is evidence of the remarkable strides made as numerous playwrights have come to grips with the problems and potential involved with this genre.
