Theatre: Home

This guide will help you find resources about theatre history and production techniques.

Theatre in Video

Theatre in Video contains more than 250 of the world’s most important plays, together with more than 100 video documentaries, online in streaming video—more than 500 hours in all. Titles of these videos are now available in UT's Library Catalog.

Digital Theatre Plus
A collection of British theater productions with interviews and detailed text analysis, Digital Theatre Plus captures the moments before the curtain rises and after the curtain falls, providing valuable insight into the play making process. By revealing the world of the rehearsal room, dressing room, backstage and beyond, their documentaries and interviews introduce theatre as a vibrant, exciting art form through a familiar and accessible medium.

New Databases

Shakespeare in Performance : Prompt Books from the Folger Shakespeare Library
The resource features prompt books from the world-famous collection at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC. 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.
Eighteenth Century Drama: Censorship, Society and the Stage
Features the John Larpent Collection from the Huntington Library – a unique archive of almost every play submitted for license between 1737 and 1824, as well as hundreds of documents that provide social context for the plays.

Pro Tips

Make sure that you are signed in to OneSearch to get full results: https://www.lib.utk.edu/access/accounts/

Make sure that you are signed up for Interlibrary Services (ILS) to easily borrow materials from other libraries: https://www.lib.utk.edu/request/

Anyone in the UTK community can "request a purchase": https://www.lib.utk.edu/collections/suggest-a-purchase/

Use the "My Account" feature to renew books and keep track of items pinned from OneSearch: https://libanswers.utk.edu/faq/206395

Many databases will offer citation export. This is a handy feature when dealing with a large number of items, but make sure to double check the formatting: https://tiny.utk.edu/owl

Investigate the "recall" feature if a physical item that you need is checked out. (N.B. the other user has ten days to return the item, so make an ILS request if you need something more quickly): https://libanswers.utk.edu/faq/110102

If you are trying to access an ebook, but the item is "in use," simply wait for a few minutes and try again.

To get the most out of Google Scholar, authenticate via the UTK Libraries' link: https://libguides.utk.edu/databases/490

The Studio is a great resource for multimedia projects: https://www.lib.utk.edu/studio/

Triadic Ballet, designed and created by Oskar Schlemmer. Photo by Karl Grill, c. 1922

Current Database Trial

New Oxford Shakespeare Online
The New Oxford Shakespeare presents an entirely new consideration of all of Shakespeare's works, edited from first principles from the base-texts themselves, and drawing on the latest textual and theatrical scholarship. The online edition comprises the Modern Critical Edition (with modern spelling), the Critical Reference Edition (with original spelling), and the Authorship Companion, integrating all of this material on OUP's high-powered scholarly editions platform. This unique online edition provides the perfect resource for the future of Shakespeare studies bringing the content of all three print volumes together as one powerful resource, and is a part of Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO).