WMU Research Guides: Theatre: Dictionaries & Encyclopedias

Biographical Information

Look for biographies in the library at PN 2285.

Contemporary Theatre, Film and Television
PN2285 .C58 in Central Reference
Biographical guide to a wide variety of people in show business. Each volume covers new people and includes an index to all the previous volumes.
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Includes performers, directors, writers, producers, designers, managers, choreographers, technicians, composers, executives, dancers, and critics in the United States and Great Britain.
Broadway Design Roster: designers and their credits
Ref PN2096 .A1 O93 2003
Designers of sets, costumes, and lighting.

Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window
Full-text biographies, critical essays and reviews, poems, short stories and plays of more than 130,000 international authors. This database contains the full content of the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Contemporary Authors, and selections from Children's Literature Review, Drama Criticism, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Poetry Criticism, Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism and 11 other literary criticism series.

Oxford Reference This link opens in a new window
More than 200 dictionaries, encyclopedias, language reference and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press. In addition to text, some sources include maps, illustrations, and Web links. Users can search one resource, a group of selected resources, or all of them at once. Regularly updated. This subscription is limited to five simultaneous users. Please logout when finished.
Included in this database are the following titles: Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, The Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance, and The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation.
Credo General Reference This link opens in a new window
Full text online from over 400 encyclopedias, dictionaries and other reference books. Search a topic, build a concept map or browse information sources organized by subject. Find text, images, sound files, sortable data tables and more.

Cambridge Guide to American Theatre
Ref PN2221 .C36 2007
An introduction to the history of the American theatre.
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Concise, selective articles on traditional theatre as well as circus, magic, vaudeville, folk festivals, marginalized groups, overviews of theatre in key cities, significant theater companies, and key plays and actors.
Drama Dictionary
Ref PN 1625 .H64 1988
Dictionary of theatrical subjects and vocabulary.
Facts on File Dictionary of the Theatre
Ref PN 2035 .F27 1988
5,000 articles on actors, directors, playwrights, producers, genres, plays, general terms, etc.
McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama
Ref PN1625 .M3 1984
Thousands of articles on playwrights as well as survey articles on theatre in individual countries.
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Includes the history of performance as well as the writing of plays. Extensive treatments of subjects like Arabic Theatre and Hebrew Theatre. Longer articles are devoted to major playwrights. Many illustrations of productions.

Theatre in Context This link opens in a new window
Search or Browse a database covering all aspects of the Canadian and American Theatre. It includes some 40,000 pages of major reference materials, together with records to approximately 30,000 plays, 57,000 people, 5,400 theatres, 22,000 productions, and 2,500 production companies.

NTC's Dictionary of Theatre and Drama Terms
PN2035 .M63x
Concise definitions of major terms.
World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre
PN1861 .W67 1994
6-volume survey of theatre history from 1945, by country.
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Articles focus on what makes a country's theatre national, rather than on specific playwrights, plays, actors, or theater histories.