Theatre and Dance: Plays

Columbia University Libraries subscribes to exceptional collections of recorded performance.

Please consult the Streaming Video Research Guide for access to these collections. 

Asian American Drama 
Asian American Drama brings together more than 250 plays representing the various ethnicities within the Asian American community. Along with many works by writers of Japanese, Filipino, Vietnamese, and Chinese descent, the collection includes plays by writers of Hawaiian, Indian, Thai, Korean, Persian, and Malaysian ancestry, along with related biographical, production, and theatrical information. The collection begins in the late nineteenth century and continues to the writings of contemporary playwrights. Some 50% of the plays have never been published before. The database also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays.

Black Drama
Contains 1,200 plays by 300 playwrights from North America, Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, Australia, and other locations, including the great names in drama (Zora Neale Hurston, August Wilson, Ossie Davis, Sonia Sanchez, Langston Hughes).

CLIO: Columbia Libraries Information Online
Search for books, journal holdings, plays, screenplays, videos, DVDs and sound recordings.

Drama Online
Includes the full text of plays from across the history of the theatre, ranging from Aeschylus to the present day.
Includes non-English-language works in translation, scholarly and critical editions, first night program texts, and critical analysis and contextual information. Critical interpretations, theatre history surveys and major reference works on authors, movements, practitioners, periods and genres are included alongside performance and practitioner texts, acting and backstage guides. Also includes images from the Victoria and Albert Museum's archive of production photos.

Early English Books Online (EEBO)
Contains full-page images of most books published in English and the English-speaking world prior to 1700.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)
Contains full-text British and American imprints from 1701-1800.

English Verse Drama Database
Contains full-text of more than 1700 English plays in verse from the end of the 13th century to the end of the 19th century.

Latin American Women Writers
Latin American Women Writers is an extensive searchable collection of prose, poetry, and drama composed by women writing in Mexico, Central America, and South America. Also included are essays by Latin American feminists and revolutionaries, who address both the universal concerns of women in every age and the distinctive issues of their struggles in the region.

Literature Online (LION)
Large searchable collection of English-language literature, plus some literary reference tools.

New Play Exchange
The New Play Exchange is a collection of digital scripts by living writers. Search features provides for filtering by title, length, genre, subject matter, production history, script availability, cast size and characteristics, and playwright. Intended scope is international. Published by the National New Play Network. 

North American Indian Drama 
Full text of plays by American Indian and First Nation playwrights of the 20th century, information about the plays and their production, and biographical data. The collection represents groups across the United States and Canada , including Cherokee, Métis, Creek, Choctaw, Pembina Chippewa, Ojibway, Hawaiian/Samoan, Comanche, Cree, Navajo, Rappahannock , and others. Also includes issues of the Native playwrights' newsletter.

North American Women's Drama 
North American Women's Drama brings together more than 1,500 plays by more than 300 playwrights, along with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. The collection begins with the works of Mercy Otis Warren and Susanna Haswell Rowson in colonial times and spans the 19th and 20th centuries to the present. It includes playwrights such as Marsha Norman, Beth Henley, Susan Glaspell, Sophie Treadwell, Gertrude Stein, Maria Irene Fornes, Emily Mann, Zora Neale Hurston, Jane Martin, Lynn Nottage, Theresa Rebeck, Nora Ephron, Susan Sontag, Edna Ferber, Alice Childress, Rachel Crothers, Megan Terry, and many more.

Play Index
Indexes some 31,000 plays published individually or in collections from 1949 to the present. Includes the ability to search over 600 monologues for auditions. Limiters include cast size and gender and appropriate grade level.

Twentieth Century North American Drama
Contains the full text of 1,500 plays written from the late 1800s to the present.

Twentieth-Century Drama
Currently includes over 1,500 plays representative of the English speaking world from 1890 to the present. When complete, the database will contain 2,500 plays.