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Theatre: Subject Guide

Resources for your Theatre research in the Smith Library Center and on the Web.

Need Spanish Plays?

ESTRENO Plays is an annual series of contemporary Spanish plays translated into English. 

To find them, do a Worldcat@SU catalog keyword search for "Estreno Plays" and browse the results.

Play Index

Play Index searches over 30,000 plays written from antiquity to the present and published from 1949 to the present. Play Index includes plays written in or translated into English, including mysteries, pageants, plays in verse, puppet performances, radio and television plays, and classic drama. Search for plays by title; author; subject (sisters, culture conflict, marriage); style (symbolism, experimental theater); genre (comedy, melodrama, musical); or cast type.

Note that many plays are published in multiple publications; doing keyword searches in the library's online catalog will check to see if the plays you find listed in Play Index are in our library's collection.

Finding Plays and Monologues

1.) Full-length plays are often published as complete books. Search by author (playwright's name) or title.

2.) One-act plays are often published in compilations. Search by keyword and enter the play's title.

3.) Often plays are published as a part of collected works. Search by keyword and type in the author's last name and "complete works" or "collected works" or "complete papers" Search on: "Shakespeare and complete works."

You can perform a subject search in the Worldcat@SU catalog by searching "monologues" or "dialogues."

If our library does not own the play

1.) Search The Play Index (808.82 P698) for the plays published in the years 1949-2002. For books we do not own, you may request through the material through Interlibrary Loan.

3.) Try Dramatists Play Service, Inc.  Items are for sale but the material may be available to borrow through Interlibrary Loan, or the library may be able to purchase a copy for you. 

Searching for music scores in WorldCat Local

Finding printed scores in the library is a matter of searching Worldcat@SU by keyword to find listings for a composer, the title of a work, instrumentation, musical form, or arranger. The catalog allows you to limit your results to Musical Scores from the results screen by using the Format checkbox to indicate that you are looking for a Musical score.

The library's printed scores are shelved by call number in the Music Library in SLC 111.