UVM Libraries Research Guides: Theatre: Plays & Monologues

Play Listings

Theatre World
Call Number: REF PN 2277.N5 A17 1944/45-2012/2013 (msg. 1950/51). ceased publication with 2012/2013
Main American theater annual, which provides detailed listings of plays performed in the United States, including cast, credits, photos, and other production information.
Directory of the American Theater, 1894-1971; Indexed to the Complete Series of Best Plays Theater Yearbooks...
Call Number: REF PN 6112 .B4524
Indexes authors and titles of Broadway, off-Broadway, and off-off-Broadway shows named in the Best Plays annuals, including the retrospective volumes. Best Plays... are located in the Main Collection, 3rd floor. Call Number PN 6112 .B45
Index to Plays, 1800-1926
Call Number: REF Z 5781 .A1 F5 & Supplement [1927-1934]
A guide to available editions of plays by 19th and 20th century authors.

Play Listings - (Free) Internet Sources

Inter-Play
Index to plays. Created by the Humanities librarians at Portland State University.
Stageplays.com
Commercial site based in the UK and US which sells, what they claim to be, virtually every play currently published in the English language, arranged primarily for those who are looking for plays for performance. Search for plays by genre and by country. A brief synopsis is included for each play.
Dramatists Play Service
Commercial site which sells and licenses plays for performance. Offers an extensive list of titles, including "a preponderance of the most significant American plays of the past half-century." Search for plays by browsing title and author lists, or use the "Playfinder" to search by various categories. A brief synopsis is included for each play.

Play Plots & Stories

Oxford Dictionary of Plays
Provides essential information on the 1,000 best-known, best-loved, and most important plays in world theatre. Each entry includes details of the title, author, date of writing, date of first performance, genre, setting, and composition of cast; there is also a summary of the play's plot, and a brief commentary.

Masterplots This link opens in a new window
Print: REF PN 44 .M33 2011 [4th ed, 12 vols]
Contains summaries of books, plays, stories, poems, authors, and characters in American literature, African American literature, British and Commonwealth literature, World literature (fiction, drama, short stories, poetry, nonfiction, juvenile and young adult). Each entry lists author, type of plot, time of plot, locale, publish date, summary, description of characters, themes and meaning, a brief evaluative essay, and sources for further study.

Find Books in the Library Catalog (CATQuest) by Subject
Subject Headings

drama stories plots etc	greek drama stories plots etc
drama 20th century stories plots etc	musicals stories plots etc

Keyword

drama stories plots

Full-text Plays

Electronic text archives and plays online
Crowd-sourced website for full-text plays.
"Readers will find here links to all the plays we know about that are available in full text versions online for free."

Monologues

Find collections of Monologues in the Classic Library Catalog by using a Subject Heading search in the Quick Search mode.
Subject Headings: Monologues