Theatre Arts

The New Play Exchange is a streamlined script discovery engine for the new play sector with over 28,000 scripts. With our Higher Ed subscription we can find plays to read, direct, inquire about rights, and contact writers. Beyond that basic search function you will have to subscribe as an individual for more advanced features.

Available on the Drama Online platform, the Nick Hern Books Modern Plays collection includes over 750 plays from many of the UK and Ireland’s preeminent playwrights, as well as exciting new voices. It offers a wide and varied range of award-winning and widely studied plays and is continually updated with new works fresh from leading theatres.

Accessible via the Drama Online platform, this collection has over 125 contemporary plays and places particular emphasis on women's drama, international drama, drama in translation, and works by black and Asian writers.

This collection examines the richness and diversity of contemporary theatre and drama from a global context. Contemporary World Drama brings together new work from our existing playwright partners alongside work from up-and-coming playwrights from around the world, including recently produced world premieres, previously unpublished works, etc. from every continent.

Asian American Drama contains 252 plays by 42 playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. Some 50% of these plays have never been published before. The collection begins with the works of Sadakichi Hartmann in the late 19th century and progresses to the writings of contemporary playwrights, such as Philip Kan Gotanda, Elizabeth Wong, and Jeannie Barroga.

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 More than 40 percent of the collection consists of previously unpublished plays by writers such as Langston Hughes, Ed Bullins, Willis Richardson, Amiri Baraka, Randolph Edmonds, Zora Neale Hurston, and many others.

Description: Latin American Drama is a one-of-a-kind database with plays written by Latin American playwrights in the 19th-21st centuries. Besides serving as a rich resource for literature scholars, the collection also supports the study of American history, ethnic diversity, immigrations issues, and political history.

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.

The Film Scripts Online Series contains over 1,100 scripts and makes available, for the first time, accurate and authorized versions of copyrighted screenplays.

LION provides texts, and criticism of over 350,000 works of poetry, prose and drama from the 8th to the 21st century including thousands of literary articles, essays, biographies and encyclopedia entries, including access to the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL) and the Modern Language Association Index (MLA).  LION also includes audio and video content through Poets on Screen recordings and the Shakespeare Audio Plays collection.

Digital preservation repository which provides long-term preservation and access services for content from a variety of sources. Public domain titles are available full text. Includes historic playscripts.