History of American Theatre
- The Encyclopedia of the American Theatre, 1900-1975Call Number: UCF Main Library Reference -- PN 2266 .B68ch2ck availability
Covers plays written or adapted by British and American authors and produced on and off Broadway. Entries cite date and place of original production, length of run, cast, producer, director, screen adaptations, and include a brief synopsis. - The Oxford Companion to American TheatreCall Number: UCF Main Library Reference -- PN 2220 .B6 2004Entries on actors, directors, playwrights, theatre companies, etc., as well as on individual plays or musicals. Emphasis is on Broadway and the New York stage.
- Theatre WorldCall Number: UCF Main Library Reference -- PN 2277.N5 A17 (1964+)An illustrated yearbook of the American theatre, emphasizing the New York scene, but also including productions of national touring companies, professional regional companies, and Shakespeare festivals. Gives cast, production credits, dates of run or season. Also includes brief performer biographies, obituaries, awards, and name/title index.
Some volumes may be accessible in the Internet Archive - "Theater and Musical Theater." Encyclopedia of American Social HistoryCall Number: UCF Main Library Reference -- HN57.E58 1993ch2ck availability of print version
Volume 3, pages 1859-1879
- Colonial & Early National Periods
- Expansion & Diversification, 1812-1865
- From Melodrama to Realism, from Commercialism to Competition, 1865-1929
- From Modernism to Postmodernism, 1915 to the Present
broken link - http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/uhic/ReferenceDetailsPage/ReferenceDetailsWindow?query=&prodId=UHIC&displayGroupName=Reference&limiter=&source=&disableHighlighting=false&displayGroups=&sortBy=&search_within_results=&action=2&catId=&activityType=&documentId=GALE%7CBT2313027028&userGroupName=orla57816&jsid=975c6fed777d92871ec318194f9f3d05
- Belknap Playbills and Programs Collection (University of Florida)"The Theatre Playbill and Program Collection is the largest area of acquisition in the Belknap Collection for the Performing Arts with approximately 9500 individual play titles stored in 111 archival boxes. Each folder contains promotional and program ephemera for various productions (professional and amateur) dating from the late 18th century to the present."
American Theatre: A Chronicle of Comedy & Drama, 1869-2000
"This three-volume work will accomplish for the American non-musical theatre what Bordman's American Musical Theatre did for our song-and-dance entertainments: it chronicles, in order by opening, every Broadway comedy and drama, show by show, season by season, offering a plot synopsis,principal players, and important statistics. Scenery and costumes are described where they might be of interest, and comments of the plays' contemporary critics are quoted. In many instances, extended excerpts from the play are included to give the reader a fuller understanding of its nuances and its period dialogue. Also included, and worked chronologically into the text, are details about cheap-priced, cliff-hanging melodramas, such as Bertha, the Sewing Machine Girl and His Sister's Shame, which were among America's most popular diversions in theatres catering to blue-collar playgoers until silent films drew away their audiences. Examples of shows produced and designed for other than New York are included."
American Theatre: a chronicle of comedy & drama, 1869-1914 by Call Number: UCF Main Library Reference -- PN2256.B6 1994"This volume deals with the great expansion of American theatre after the Civil War, the careers of such prominent actors and actresses as Edwin Booth, Mrs. Fiske, the Drew and Barrymore families, the first important American playwrights like Clyde Fitch, producers like David Belasco, and the influence of foreign plays and players. This stage history, besides giving a sense of each production, touches on the literary worth of the plays, provides brief biographies of major figures, and sets all of this against the economic and social backgrounds of the time. Readers will close the book feeling they, like their parents and grandparents, have sat through performances of these shows of another era."
American Theatre: a chronicle of comedy & drama, 1914-1930 by Call Number: UCF Main Library Reference -- PN2256.B6 1995"This second volume in the series, covers what is probably the richest period in American theater, the years 1914 through 1930. Bordman includes most of Eugene O'Neill's work, along with playwrights as diverse as Elmer Rice and George Kaufman. Among the era's stars one finds John and Ethel Barrymore, Helen Hayes, Katherine Cornell, and Lynn Fontaine and Alfred Lunt. Considering the sheer number of productions, American theater climbed to its all-time high in the 1920s; by mid-decade, nearly 300 new plays appeared on Broadway each year. America saw more theatrical activity--in every sense of the word-- than any time before or since."
American Theatre: a chronicle of comedy and drama, 1930-1969 by Call Number: UCF Main Library Reference -- PN2266.B64 1996This book concludes Gerald Bordman's acclaimed survey of American non-musical theatre. It deals with the years 1930 to 1970, a period when the number of yearly new plays was shrinking, but a period during which American drama as a whole entered the world stage and became a dominant force. With works like Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire, and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, American theater finally reached adulthood both dramatically and psychologically. Bordman's lively, authoritative study covers every Broadway production,as well as every major off-Broadway show."
American Theatre: a chronicle of comedy and drama, 1969-2000 by Call Number: UCF Main Library Reference -- PN2277.N5H57 2001"Volume Four of the distinguished American Theatre: A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama series offers a thorough, candid, and fascinating look at the theater in New York during the last decades of the twentieth century."
American Theatre Companies, 1749-1986
- American Theatre Companies, 1749-1887Call Number: UCF Main Library Reference -- PN2237.A43 1986
- American Theatre Companies, 1888-1930Call Number: UCF Main Library Reference -- PN2237.A43 1987
- American Theatre Companies, 1931-1986Call Number: UCF Main Library Reference -- PN2237.A43 1989
The American stage, 1699-1950
- A History of the Theatre in America from Its Beginnings to the Present Time byCall Number: UCF Main Library General Collection - 4th Floor -- PN2221.H6 1965ch4ck availability of print version
First published in 1919; reissued in 1965. - History of the American Drama, from the Beginning to the Civil War byCall Number: UCF Main Library General Collection - 4th Floor -- PS332.Q56 1943
- Annals of the New York Stage (1699-1894)Call Number: UCF Main Library General Collection - 4th Floor -- PN2277.N5O4 1970ch4ck availability
v. 1. To 1798.--v. 2. 1798-1821.--v. 3. 1821-1834.--v. 4. 1834-1843.--v. 5. 1843-1850.--v. 6. 1850-1857.--v. 7. 1857-1865.--v. 8. 1865-1870.--v. 9. 1870-1875.--v. 10.--1875-1879.--v. 11. 1879-1882.--v. 12. 1882-1885.--v. 13. 1885-1888.--v. 14. 1888-1891.--v. 15. 1891-1894 - A History of the New York Stage from the First Performance in 1732 to 1901 byCall Number: UCF ONLINE General Collection -- PN2277.N5 P7 1903
- Our Theatres To-day & Yesterday byCall Number: UCF ONLINE General Collection -- PN2277.N5D6 1913"Beginnings of the drama on Manhattan Island and the troublous days of early managers and players, with anecdotal account of the growth of the amusement industry. Stories and personal sketches of men and women connected with famous houses in a bygone era, as well as the present. From 1732 to 1913."
- The Charleston Stage in the XVIII Century: with Social Settings of the Time (1735-1800) byCall Number: UCF ONLINE General Collection -- PN2277.C3W5 1924
- Records of the New York Stage from 1750 to 1860 byCall Number: UCF Main Library General Collection - 4th Floor -- PN2277.N5I7 1968
- The Business of the Theatre: an economic history of the American theatre, 1750-1932 byCall Number: UCF Main Library Oversize - 3rd Floor -- PN2291.B4 1964
- A Record of the Boston Stage byCall Number: UCF Main Library General Collection - 4th Floor -- PN2277.B6C5 1969
- History of the Boston Theatre, 1854-1901 byCall Number: UCF Main Library General Collection - 4th Floor -- PN2277.B7B77 1969
- American Variety Stage: Vaudeville & Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920 by"a multimedia anthology selected from various Library of Congress holdings. This collection illustrates the vibrant and diverse forms of popular entertainment, especially vaudeville, that thrived from 1870-1920. Included are 334 English- and Yiddish-language playscripts, 146 theater playbills and programs, 61 motion pictures, 10 sound recordings and 143 photographs and 29 memorabilia items documenting the life and career of Harry Houdini."
- Matinee Tomorrow: Fifty Years of Our Theater (1898-1950) byCall Number: UCF Main Library General Collection - 4th Floor -- PN2277.N5M55ch4ck availability of print version
"IN THE writing of this book I have made an effort to put an informal history of the New York theater of the past half century into a single volume; to present an examination and, to some extent, an interpretation, of the Broadway stage from the days of Lillian Russell to Mary Martin, from the time of Clyde Fitch to that of Tennessee Williams." - The American Stage of To-day byCall Number: UCF ONLINE General Collection -- PN2266 .E3 1908Most of the papers in this volume are reprinted, though with numerous changes and additions, from the "New York Sun" from 1907 and 1908.
- Traveling Culture: Circuit Chautauqua in the Twentieth Century (University of Iowa Libraries)"presents promotional performers circulars (publicity brochures), musical and spoken word recordings, and programs drawn from the Records of the Redpath Lyceum Bureau, the largest booking agency for circuit Chautauqua, an enterprise that between 1904 and 1932 brought together under the canvas of large tents thousands of performers and lecturers and millions of small town residents across the United States."
- The New Deal Stage: Selections from the Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939 by"includes over 13,000 images of items selected from the Federal Theatre Project Collection at the Library of Congress. Featured here are stage and costume designs, still photographs, posters, and scripts for productions of Macbeth and The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus as staged by Orson Welles, and for Power, a topical drama of the period (over 3,000 images). Also included are 68 other playscripts (6,500 images) and 168 documents selected from the Federal Theatre Project Administrative Records (3,700 images)."
- The Encyclopedia of the New York Stage, 1920-1930Call Number: UCF Main Library Reference - 2nd Floor -- PN2277.N5L36 1985"This book, the first of a planned multivolume series, is an attempt to provide a description of every legitimate theatre production — play, musical, revue, revival — given in the New York professional theatre during the decade of the 1920s."
- The Encyclopedia of the New York Stage, 1940-1950Call Number: UCF Main Library Reference - 2nd Floor -- PN2277.N5L365 1992
The American stage, 1950+
- Ten Seasons: New York Theatre in the Seventies byCall Number: UCF Main Library General Collection - 4th Floor -- PN2277.N5L37 1986
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