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Theatre Research Guide

Finding Articles

Articles from scholarly journals are excellent tools to build your research on a topic. Use a subject-specific database to find articles spanning across a wide variety of journals, or if you have a specific journal in mind, you can go directly to that journal and select articles from there.  Take a look at our recommended databases and journals below!

Databases

Arts & Humanities Database

This database features hundreds of titles covering Art, Architecture, Design, History, Philosophy, Music, Literature, Theatre and Cultural Studies.

Digital Theatre Plus

DT+ is a world-class repository of audio-visual and written resources for theatre and performance studies. They collaborate with over 50 leading theatre companies, educational organizations, arts collectives and other providers to bring you the highest quality resources for teaching and learning. With award-winning productions, e-learning videos, ready-made lesson plans, and insightful essays and study guides, DT+ has something for every teaching need!

IPA Source

The web's largest library of International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions and literal translations of opera arias and art song texts. Now with over 12444 titles!

MLA International Bibliography (with Full Text)

From the Modern Language Association (MLA) and EBSCO, this resource combines an extensive collection of full-text journals with the definitive index for the study and teaching of language, literature, linguistics, rhetoric, writing studies, folklore, film, theatre, and other dramatic arts.

ProQuest Learning: Literature

Full-text works of poetry, prose and drama, and secondary sources such as author biographies, literary criticisms, essays, reviews and interviews. Designed with schools and public libraries in mind.

Newspapers

When researching theatre and acting, it may behoove you to seek information outside the realm of scholarly. These would include newspaper and magazine articles that would provide information on an actor, playwright, particle showing of a play or movie, or reviews. This is where newspaper sources come in handy. The following are the databases that generate content from newspapers and magazines. 

Newspapers and Magazines

CQ Researcher

Reports on issues shaping our world, with in-depth coverage of political and social issues, such as health, education, the environment, technology, and the U.S. economy.

Gale in Context: Biography

Discover the world's most influential people by searching narrative biographies, news, magazine, and multimedia content.

MasterFILE Premier

General reference magazines and publications covering a wide-range of subject areas including business, health, education, general science and multicultural issues. Includes peer reviewed publications.

New York Times

Full articles from the New York Times (1980-current).

Nexis Uni

Explore more than 17,000 news, business, and legal sources in this academic research database. Nexis Uni contains company and industry information for business research as well as codes, court cases and other legal information for legal research. Nexis Uni also provides access to an array of newspapers and full text journal articles for legal and business research.

ProQuest Research Library

General reference database from business and political science to literature and psychology scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, and daily news content, accessible to readers and researchers at every level.

US Newsstream

News content from many national and international newspapers, newswires and selected news magazines.

Washington Post

Full articles from The Washington Post (1996-current).

Can't find the full-text?

If you're having trouble finding the full text of an article, Jones Library can make a request for the article to be emailed to you (for free!) through interlibrary loan (ILL).  Follow the steps in this guide to submit an ILL request.