As you are working on research for your Theatre courses, please let me know if I can help in any way! Please feel free to email me and we can discuss your questions over email, or we can set up a virtual or in-person research session over Zoom. View my calendar to set up a time that works for you.
Below are links and research tips to using ZSR's resources remotely. ZSR has access to thousands of ebooks and millions of online articles through our regular resources in the library catalog and databases such as Performing Arts Periodicals Database and JSTOR. The Oxford Companion to Theatre and Performance will be particularly helpful right now, and see the Reference tab above for links to other online reference resources. Additionally, we have access to full-text playscripts, as well as thousands of streaming films and online images if you need multimedia resources. Get help finding and using these resources from the tabs above.
And last, but not least, remember to cite your sources! The Chicago Manual of Style (use VPN) can help you with formatting citations for the sources you find.
Stay healthy and well!
Kaeley McMahan
mcmahak@wfu.edu
Two Tech Tips:
- Download and use VPN: If you keep VPN running in the background while you access campus resources (ebooks, databases, etc...) it makes it look like you are on campus, so many of the authentication issues you might otherwise have will go away.
- ProQuest Ebook Central: If you get this error message, don't fear! Just do as it says and reload the page and it will take you to your book:

Online Reference Resources
Use reference resources to get background information on a play, actor, playwright, theme, or terminology. Many of these sources include bibliographies which list additional books and journal articles that would be useful for further research.
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Literature Criticism Online
Extensive, searchable compilation of literary commentary. Scholarly and popular commentary from broadsheets, pamphlets, books and periodicals, with page images of the print originals.
Scholarly Ebooks
You will find many scholarly ebooks on theatre and literature topics in the library catalog. For some examples, see this search and how it was constructed. Use an * and OR to get more search results. In this search, theat*= theater, theaters, theatre, theatres. To get results that contain both England and Britain/British, place an OR between the two terms. To view only ebooks, select both "available online" and "books" from the filters on the left.

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Public Books Database
Listing of university presses that have made ebooks available temporarily. Organized by publisher name. If you don't know which publisher published the book you are looking for, consult the library catalog (make sure to deselect the online only search limit) or amazon.
Scholarly Journal Articles
Scholarly journal articles can be located through the Performing Arts Periodicals Database, as well as through history and multi-subject databases. If you are looking for scholarly/peer-reviewed/academic articles (as opposed to performance reviews or essays), look for these features:
- at least 8-10 pages in length
- author is an academic (professor, PhD, researcher, etc....) or in some cases a practitioner (director, actor, set designer, etc...)
- published in an academic journal (Theatre Journal, Theatre Research International, Performance Research, Women & Performance, etc...)
- the bibliography is appropriate for the article length
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Performing Arts Periodicals Database This link opens in a new windowPerforming Arts Periodicals Database indexes around 400 scholarly and trade journals, magazines, books, and newspapers covering theater, dance, film, television, stagecraft, broadcast arts, storytelling, and more. It draws from both current files and selected backfiles to 1864 and 134 publications are included in full text. Coverage: 1864-
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MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new windowIndexes articles, books, chapters of books, conference proceedings, dissertations, and working papers on topics relating to literature, modern languages, folklore, and linguistics. Coverage: 1926-
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Literature Criticism Online This link opens in a new windowExtensive, searchable compilation of literary commentary. Scholarly and popular commentary from broadsheets, pamphlets, books and periodicals, with page images of the print originals. Combines the contents of Contemporary Literary Criticism, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Classical & Medieval Literature Criticism, Literature Criticism from 1400-1800, Drama Criticism, Poetry Criticism, Short Story Criticism, Shakespearean Criticism, and Children's Literature Review into a single online resource. Coverage: through June 2012
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Humanities International Index This link opens in a new windowAn index to creative, critical and scholarly English-language literary journals and magazines (primarily American and Canadian). Most of these journals are either not indexed elsewhere or are indexed only partially in other indexing services. All publications are indexed in their entirety - including fiction and poems. Coverage: 1975-
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JSTOR This link opens in a new windowA full-text database of archived issues of academic journals. Since JSTOR is a backfiles project, a typical coverage range is the beginning of a journal until three or five years ago. Supported in part by the Dail Endowment Fund. Coverage: Varies
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Project MUSE This link opens in a new windowProvides access to the full text of over 100 scholarly journals in the arts and humanities and social sciences. Coverage: Varies
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America: History and Life This link opens in a new windowAmerica: History and Life provides abstracts and citations from reviews and dissertations about the history and culture of the United States and Canada from the earliest recorded times to the present. See Historical Abstracts for world history. Coverage: 1964-
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Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new windowHistorical Abstracts provides indexing and abstracts for journal articles, books, and dissertations covering the history of the world from 1450-- except the U.S. and Canada. For similar coverage of the U.S. and Canada, use America History and Life. Coverage: 1954-
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Understanding Shakespeare This link opens in a new windowEasily find JSTOR articles that cite a given line of a Shakespeare play. Simply navigate to the line of the play and click the number next to it to view a list of relevant articles from the JSTOR archive. Understanding Shakespeare is a collaborative project between JSTOR Labs and the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Playscripts and Streaming Productions
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Drama Online This link opens in a new windowDrama Online is a unique online resource published by Bloomsbury Publishing, of over 1,000 full-text plays and 100+ related reference works. Accessible collections include the Core Collection, Nick Hern Books Modern Plays, Shakespeare's Globe on Screen 1&2, and Shakespeare in the Present.
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American Drama, 1714-1915 This link opens in a new windowOver 700 plays by dramatists such as Thomas Paine, Edward Hitchcock, and James Lawson. Coverage: 1714-1915
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English Drama This link opens in a new windowContains 4,000 plays by 1,200 authors from the late thirteenth century to the early twentieth century. Coverage: 1280-1915
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Digital Theatre+ This link opens in a new windowDigital Theatre+ provides access to hundreds of theatre productions and educational resources covering English and the Performing Arts.
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Theatre in Video This link opens in a new windowStreaming video of definitive performances of the world's leading plays, together with more than 100 film documentaries. Users can bookmark specific scenes, monologues and staging. Coverage: Details not available