THAR 130: Introduction to Theatre Design: Overview
Historical Productions
Finding information about the history of a play can be difficult, and often requires archival research. Students can still use primary and secondary resources to find out about production history, even without traveling to archives.
Find Broadway production dates, theater of production, playwright, and brief descriptions. Some plays have cast and crew information. A great place to start.
Search the full-text of the New York Times, Chicago Defender, LA Times, Wall Street Journal and a select few other newspapers. Date coverage ranges by newspaper, but often extends to the late 1800s. Useful for finding historical theater reviews. Consider using the print New York Times Theater Reviews discussed below.
An excellent resource to find theater reviews from 1920-1971. Use the index volume to look up the work, playwright, or crew member of interest, then consult individual volumes for content.
An early 20th-century journal devoted to the Theatre Arts, complete with many high-quality images. Use the index to look up the work, playwright, or director of interest. Public domain (pre-1923) volumes are have been digitized by HathiTrust.
Another 20th-century Theatre Arts journal of interest, focusing from the 1920s to 1960s. While there is no cumulative index, many titles are searchable (though not fully viewable) through HathiTrust.
Content from newspapers around the globe. Date coverage ranges from 1981-present. Useful for finding contemporary theater reviews.
Historical Context
Penn Libraries has several databases and print materials for researching the scenic design elements of an era: costume, architecture, furniture, and other stage elements.
A leading database for the study of art and architecture, with coverage from early 1980s to the present.
A leading database for the study of art and architecture...provides full-text coverage of 380 periodicals and more than 220 books. [Coverage of periodicals mostly begins with 1980s or later, but some titles are indexed for longer periods as far back as the 1930s.] In addition, Art & Architecture Source offers cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for more than 780 academic journals, magazines and trade publications, as well as for over 230 books. The database also provides selective coverage for 70 additional publications and an Image Collection of over 63,000 images provided by Picture Desk and others. Designed for use by a diverse audience that includes art scholars, artists, designers, college students, and general researchers, [t]his database covers a wide variety of pertinent subjects, including antiques, art, art history, interior and landscape design, and much more. {adapted from publisher's description}
Bibliographic citations with indexing for all aspects of English literature, literary culture, and linguistics. Coverage 1920-present (with content lagging behind by 1 year).
Penn Libraries has several databases and print materials for researching the scenic design elements of an era: costume, architecture, furniture, and other stage elements. 
