Contains a very large collection of the Alexander Street Press streaming video, including topics in history, art, international studies, dance, theater, and more.

This aggregated database provides access to all of KU’s Alexander Street Press collections.  Video, audio, and text covering a wide variety of subject matters are included.  In addition to contemporary sources, this database contains significant amounts of primary sources. 

Search for and watch over 700 educational streaming videos, including all 37 of the BBC Shakespeare plays. 

Covers three centuries of rare and modern dramatic works that together have formed the internationally recognized voice that is American theater. More than 1,500 plays are available, from over 500 playwrights.

The online version of Arts and Humanities Citation Index has been incorporated into the Web of Science database.

This database includes over 250 plays by Asian Americans, starting in the 19th century. It also includes biographical, production, and theatrical information for each play. 

Black Drama, now in its expanded third edition, contains the full text of more than 1,700 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by more than 200 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. Many of the works are rare, hard to find, or out of print. More than 40 percent of the collection consists of previously unpublished plays by writers such as Langston Hughes, Ed Bullins, Willis Richardson, Amiri Baraka, Randolph Edmonds, Zora Neale Hurston, and many others.

The Broadway on Demand Collection provides an extensive range of content that goes beyond live performances. Along with musicals, plays, and dance performances, the collection includes unique behind-the-scenes series, documentaries, and masterclasses to help researchers gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of the art of theater. 

 Provides 900 hours of video content covering the full scope of 20th and 21st century dance. The collection includes performances, documentaries, interviews, and instructional videos from the most influential performers and companies.

A streaming video database of theater productions, including Shakespeare, classics, musical theater, dance, opera, and recent British productions.

Digital Theatre Plus uses Single Sign On for both on and off campus users:

  • Click Sign in and enter your email address ending in 'ku.edu' then click Next.
  • Type in 'Kansas' or scroll down to find 'University of Kansas' then click the institution name.
  • Sign in with KU username and password.

A digital library has been created as a response to the need for a high-quality online research tool for drama and literature students, professors, and teachers. It is the only resource to combine exclusively available play text content and scholarly publications with filmed live performances, film adaptations, and audio plays.

This resource is supported through collaborative efforts between the KU Libraries and the Theatre Department.

Includes more than 3,900 plays in verse and prose from the late thirteenth century to the early twentieth. The database contains works acted on or intended for the stage. It includes masques, interludes, short dramatic pieces, translations and adaptations, closet dramas, and works written for children.

Provides access to biographies, bibliographies and critical analysis of authors from every age and literary discipline. Covers novelists, poets, essayists, journalists and other writers, with in-depth coverage of the most-studied authors. Includes essays on the history of specific publishing companies.

A basic resource for research in the fields of theatre and dance.  Indexes more than 170 full-text journals and more than 360 full-text books.

Research the writings of Latin American playwrights from the last three centuries. In addition to plays this database includes biographical, production, and theatrical information.

Met Opera on Demand offers users instant access to more than 500 full-length Metropolitan Opera performances, including stunning HD videos from the Met's award-winning Live in HD series of movie theater transmissions, classic telecasts from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, and hundreds of radio broadcasts dating back to 1935.  Please note this resource is not compatible with the iPad due to its use of Flash Player.  The iPad app does not allow one to access the resource through one's institutional subscription.  (Restricted to 5 simultaneous users.)

Find songs according to multiple parameters, including voice type, character's age, tempo, composer, lyricist, and more.

North American Indian Drama contains 244 plays by 48 playwrights representing the stories and creative energies of American Indian and First Nation playwrights of the twentieth century. More than half of the works are previously unpublished, and hard to find, representing groups such as Cherokee, Métis, Creek, Choctaw, Pembina Chippewa, Ojibway, Lenape, Comanche, Cree, Navajo, Rappahannock, Hawaiian/Samoan, and others. Together, the plays demonstrate Native theater’s diversity of tribal traditions and approaches to drama—melding conventional dramatic form with ancient storytelling and ritual performance elements, experimenting with traditional ideas of time and narrative, or challenging Western dramatic structure.

Provides indexing, abstracts, and selected full-text from many sources, covering film, theater, dance, stagecraft, television, and more. Full-text ranges from 1864 to the present.

Find citations to some 30,000 plays published individually or in collections from 1949 to the present. Covers a wide range of plays written in or translated into English, including one-act plays, pageants, plays in verse, radio and television plays, and classic drama. (Restricted to 1 simultaneous user.)

A literary journal with writers from around the world founded by Victoria Ocampo in 1931. Contents include literature, film, theatre, art, music, history, and politics. The electronic version offers all pages and images of the 364 issues, including covers and advertisements.

Provides access to hundreds of the world's most important plays, documentaries, interviews, and instructional materials.

Provides access to hundreds of the world's most important plays, documentaries, interviews, and instructional materials

Includes annotated entries for all important books, articles, book reviews, dissertations, theatrical productions, audiovisual materials, electronic media, and other scholarly and popular materials related to Shakespeare. The goal is to add material published or produced since 1900. Each year, coverage will move forward one year and backwards at least three years.