Images/Art/Video
Below are a variety of resources where you can access images, art, and streaming videos. Keep in mind that Newspapers may also be a good place to get images along with reviews.
Digital Theatre Plus AND Drama Online may be of particular interest as they have high quality, full length, professional performances available for streaming, with new content being added regularly.
Streaming Theatre Content
The databases below contain streaming video and audio content including but not limited to full productions and interviews.
BBC Shakespeare Plays
Features a series of television adaptations from the 1980s, digitally remastered and streamed in their entirety as well as act by act. Includes image galleries with stills for each production that permit close scrutiny of costumes and scenery.
Digital Theatre Plus
Provides access to a streaming video collection of current British theatre productions. Includes behind-the-scenes documentaries, and teaching and learning resources with detailed introductions, plot summaries, character biographies, relationship maps, language analysis, scene studies, performance backgrounds, and historical contexts.
Drama Online
Provides access to the full text of plays from across the history of the theatre, ranging from Aeschylus to the present day. Includes non-English-language works in translation, scholarly and critical editions, supporting practical, critical, and contextual works on acting and performance, theatre craft, technical theatre, critical interpretations, theatre history surveys, and major reference works on authors, movements, practitioners, periods, and genres. Additional media includes L.A. Theatre Works audio plays, productions stills, streaming video of Hollow Crown, Shakespeare's Globe on Screen, and BBC Drama Films & Documentaries.
National Theatre Collection (Drama Online)
Draws on 10 years of NT Live broadcasts, alongside high-quality recordings never previously seen outside of the NT’s Archive.
On The Boards
Offers films of contemporary stage performances.
Royal Shakespeare Company Collection
Offers modern high-definition recordings of Shakespeare's dramatic canon, along with supplemental teaching materials to help students engage more deeply with the material and enhance the overall learning experience.
BBC Shakespeare Plays
Features a series of television adaptations from the 1980s, digitally remastered and streamed in their entirety as well as act by act. Includes image galleries with stills for each production that permit close scrutiny of costumes and scenery.
Digital Theatre Plus
Provides access to a streaming video collection of current British theatre productions. Includes behind-the-scenes documentaries, and teaching and learning resources with detailed introductions, plot summaries, character biographies, relationship maps, language analysis, scene studies, performance backgrounds, and historical contexts.
Drama Online
Provides access to the full text of plays from across the history of the theatre, ranging from Aeschylus to the present day. Includes non-English-language works in translation, scholarly and critical editions, supporting practical, critical, and contextual works on acting and performance, theatre craft, technical theatre, critical interpretations, theatre history surveys, and major reference works on authors, movements, practitioners, periods, and genres. Additional media includes L.A. Theatre Works audio plays, productions stills, streaming video of Hollow Crown, Shakespeare's Globe on Screen, and BBC Drama Films & Documentaries.
National Theatre Collection (Drama Online)
Draws on 10 years of NT Live broadcasts, alongside high-quality recordings never previously seen outside of the NT’s Archive.
On The Boards
Offers films of contemporary stage performances.
Royal Shakespeare Company Collection
Offers modern high-definition recordings of Shakespeare's dramatic canon, along with supplemental teaching materials to help students engage more deeply with the material and enhance the overall learning experience.
Images
The databases below contain media content including but not limited to productions stills, fashion plates, and works for art.
Arts & Culture (Google)
Artstor (ITHAKA) Tutorial Access Instructions
Associated Press Images Collection (EBSCO)
Black Drama, 3rd Edition (Alexander Street Press)
Fashion Plate Collection
Motley Collection of Theatre and Costume Design
National Portrait Gallery, London
Portraits of Actors, University of Illinois
The Noh
Theatre in Context (formerly North American Theatre Online)
World Painting Index.
Arts & Culture (Google)Features online access to the world’s art and culture in collaboration with cultural institutions and artist from around the world. Explores individual artists, art movements, and much more.
Artstor (ITHAKA) Tutorial Access InstructionsProvides access to a large library of high-resolution digital images from museums and archives. The multi-disciplinary collection includes digital copies of fashion plates, cartoons, posters, post cards, book illustrations, botanical and wildlife illustrations, technical illustrations, museum objects, and photo journalism, besides the expected artwork.
A tutorial for this resource can be found at: https://artstor.libguides.com/c.php?g=507513&p=3472284
Log in with your personal password to download images and to access a suite of specialized tools to view, present, and manage images. Log in and registration links are located in the upper right corner of the start page. Detailed registration information is available online.
Associated Press Images Collection (EBSCO)Provides access to the Associated Press's photography archive. Includes historical images dating back to the early 19th century. Also includes audio, graphics and news.
Black Drama, 3rd Edition (Alexander Street Press)Contains the full text of works by playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries together with detailed information about productions, theaters, production companies, and other ephemera related to the plays. Many of the works are rare, hard-to-find, or out of print. Includes a large number of previously unpublished plays by writers such as Langston Hughes, Derek Walcott, Alice Childress, Amiri Baraka, Zora Neale Hurston, and many others. Coverage goes back to the middle of the 19th century.
Fashion Plate CollectionMany of these plates are from some of the leading French, British, American, and other continental fashion journals of the 19th century and early 20th century: Belle assemblée; Le bon ton; Le Follet, courrier des salons; Journal des dames and des modes; Godey's lady's book and magazine, and others. They are primarily hand-colored engravings although some of the plates after 1885 are colored lithographs. A project was undertaken by the Digital Initiatives Program, University Libraries, University of Washington, to digitize and provide online access to selections from this collection.
Motley Collection of Theatre and Costume DesignThe Motley Collection of Theatre and Costume Design is a valuable source of documentation on the history of theatre and is housed in The Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois. It is a rare collection of original materials on the theatre comprising over 5000 items from more than 150 productions in England and the United States. These materials include costume and set designs, sketches, notes, photographs, prop lists, storyboards, and swatches of fabric.
National Portrait Gallery, LondonOver 53,000 low resolution images are freely available for non-commercial use though a Creative Commons license and more the 87,000 high resolution images are free to download for academic use the Gallery's own license.
Portraits of Actors, University of IllinoisPortraits of Actors, 1720-1920, includes almost 3,500 pictures of actors — studio portraits and actors posing in costume for a particular role or performing a scene from a play. Dramatists, theatrical managers, singers and musicians are also included, but the majority are British and American actors who worked between about 1770 and 1893. Among the hundreds of actors included are: Sarah Siddons, Edmund Kean, John Philip Kemble, Edwin Booth, Edwin Forrest, William Henry West Betty, Charles Mathews, Dorothy Jordan, Frances Abington, and Ada Rehan. The images were digitized from etchings, engravings, lithographs, mezzotints, aquatints, wood engravings, photographs, and photomechanically-reproduced prints, all from the University of Illinois Theatrical Print Collection.
The NohThis site includes photo stories that take you to the center of the Noh stage, reading material that helps you understand everything about Noh, articles that highlight the people who work on front stage or behind the scenes, a list of plays with guiding directories, the stories of Noh masks, and a lot more to come.
Theatre in Context (formerly North American Theatre Online)Presents a comprehensive reference work on North American theater, covering authors, plays, theaters, production companies, and major productions from colonial times to the present. Includes the full text of major reference works; also contains images of playbills, posters, photographs, and other ephemera.
World Painting Index.2 volumes
Reference Stacks
Falvey Memorial Library
Reference Stacks
Falvey Memorial Library
