Finding theatrical production histories

(Adapted by LM from the Harvard Production Histories Guide)

What is a production history?

A production history (also called performance history or stage history) is an account of significant productions of a theatrical work (play, opera, dance, etc.).

There are two levels of research on production history:

• Dates, places, interpreters: When, where, and by whom has the play been performed?
• What was each production like? What made it significant or unique in terms of style, approach, or reception?

Why study a play’s production history?

• A play can serve as a case study of changing cultural norms and theatrical styles over time.
• Seeing how different interpreters have approached a play can deepen our understanding of it.

How do you find production histories? Unless someone else has compiled one for you, there’s no single, simple place to find them. You have to piece the history together from several kinds of sources, both primary and secondary.

Production History: Primary Sources

Performances and productions can be documented with various types of primary sources:

• Newspaper Clippings
• Theatre Reviews (also see E-Resources)
• Playbills (organized by title of production, date, and theatre)
• Promptbooks
• Prints & Photographs
• Posters
• Scene and costume design / artwork
  

Some of these resources are cataloged Cruzcat.  The more information you can supply about a particular production -- production dates, place, theater, persons involved -- the more likely it is that you will be able to find material. This information can often be found in secondary sources (see below) and reviews.

Production History: Secondary Sources

To find out when and where a particular play has been performed, consult secondary sources such as these. Books can be found using Cruzcat (see suggested subject headings below); journal articles can be found in the databases listed here. To find the full text of a journal article in print or online, use the Citation Linker.

• Biographies of the playwright (choose keyword search in Cruzcat for name of playwright and biography)
• Critical editions of the play
• Websites on the playwright or the play; for example:
• The Samuel Beckett Endpage lists recent productions
• Samuel Beckett.net is best searched by keyword for particular plays
• Beckett in the Theatre: The Author as Practical Playwright and Director
• For Broadway productions, search the Internet Broadway Database. Both Broadway and Off-Broadway productions are listed in North American Theater Online.
• Journal articles via databases such as (consult the Theater Arts Research Guide for more sources):
• International Index to the Performing Arts (IIPA)
• JSTOR (mostly literary analysis, not production history)
• North American Theater Online
• The New York Times and Los Angeles Times and other newspapers (search by title in Cruzcat)
• MLA International Bibliography
• Stage histories of particular plays or playwrights. Example: The Chekhov theatre: a century of the plays in performance. To find others, see suggested library subject headings below.

Production History Subject Headings

Library of Congress subject headings can be useful for finding production histories in Cruzcat. In Cruzcat, choose subject search and enter the name of the playwright by last name, first name. Then scroll down to find entries such as these below.

EXAMPLES:

Beckett, Samuel, 1906-1989 -- Stage history

Beckett, Samuel, 1906-1989 -- Appreciation

Beckett, Samuel, 1906-1989 -- Influence
Beckett, Samuel, 1906-1989 -- Dramatic production

Quick and easy way to tell which McHenry Library room numbers are group study rooms

There is a common element to all of the group study rooms in McHenry Library: they all have a "3" as the second number. The first number tells you what floor the room is on, and the "3" tells you it's a group room.

**2nd floor exception: 2353 and 2359 are the Library Classrooms, that cannot be booked as group study rooms by students. No exceptions. But at least you can tell immediately with the above metric whether it is an office or not.

So when someone is asking for a room number and they don't know if it's an office, a classroom, or a group study room, listen for the "3" as the second number.

03xx = Media Center (0=ground floor, 3=group study/viewing rooms)

13xx = FITC/Learning Technologies (1=1st floor, 3=instructional studios, not bookable through our system)

23xx = 2nd floor group rooms, but 2353 and 2359 are library classrooms. 2316 and 2351 are the only 2nd floor group study rooms students can book

33xx = 3rd floor group study rooms

43xx = 4th floor group study rooms

Project Muse and locked content

More and more of our databases are displaying material that we don't have access to because we don't pay for that content. Some are databases which have traditionally only provided us with journal articles content, and they are now carrying books as well. One example is Project Muse. Our database description is as follows:

"Full text articles of 400+ peer-reviewed journals from Johns Hopkins University Press."

This is still true but when you enter the database it now says the following, and does not provide an access content filter until after you've done a search:

"New Project Muse search interface:
You may search for articles and/or books on the MUSE website using the search box above."

The search box says: BROWSE or search (click drop-down menu) Books and Journals or Books or Journals.

It's not necessarily a problem, but just an awareness issue since content changes often and sometimes without notice. So if someone tells you at the desk or on chat or email that they found a book in Project Muse they can't get to, the default filter in the left sidebar (for what we pay for) may have become unchecked: "Only content I have full access to."

If the box is unchecked, it will still display citation and "Download PDF" will appear, but there is a small red lock icon next to the citation.
Project Muse does not use UC-eLinks. So if someone happens to find a book here that they want but we don't have access to, they will need to re-verify the title in Cruzcat to see if we own it or Melvyl to place an ILL request.

Helpful FAQ for the Grateful Dead Archive and exhibit questions

Here is a helpful list of frequently asked questions about the Grateful Dead Archive and the exhibit:

http://library.ucsc.edu/grateful-dead-archive/faqs

Begin Your Research tutorial

Here is a really helpful UC research online tutorial, usable by any campus. Complete with a quiz, it's a great way to get students started who didn't have a library class and can't come in for help.  It was very helpful in training the McHenry Roving students.

Begin Your Research
http://www.lib.uci.edu/uc-research-tutorial/begin.html

McHenry Library wayfinding

Good reminder, from Lee (libstaff message April 30, 2012):

"...we are now directing people to the North Elevator primarily for access to the Mathematics Department offices on the 4th floor AND as the ADA / handicapped access to the 1st floor capacity classrooms or (with the East Elevator) Gnd floor capacity offices.

Otherwise, direct people going to the 1st flr classrooms or the Gnd floor capacity offices via the outside route; out the foyer and around to the right.  The North Elevator cannot handle general classroom traffic and the outside route is quicker and more direct (as long as they don't have mobility issues).  Similarly, the West Elevator and Stairs are quicker for those trying to get to Education offices on the 3rd floor."

Access to today's New York Times

We do have access to the full content of the New York Times, back to 1857 when it began.

It does take a few steps to be able to view the content of just today's paper with our subscription, but it can be done. What we do not have is a graphical version that allows the user to turn the pages. The NYT does have a public site, but it has limited full content viewing (after 10 articles you will not see the complete content), and for today's paper, it does not let you electronically turn pages either, as some electronic journals or magazines do.

Steps to see the content for today's NYT:

• from the library home page, type new york times in the Google Custom Search box on the top right
• click on the 4th result in the list
• then click on the blue title, New York Times
• change the Date Range from all dates to today's month, day, and year
• click Search
• change the Sort Results By from Relevance to Publication Date (most recent first)

Now you will see a list of all of the content from today's paper, listed in section order, beginning with A1.

If someone wants to compare that with the public NYT site that includes photos and graphics, they can open two tabs, one with the search above, and the other with the public site.

Library power outages and losing documents

Just a reminder that students (and all patrons) should be encouraged to save their documents often and in the ways recommended below. Even a brief power outage can results in lost documents. Recommendations and warnings from IT are listed below.

Safest ways to save:

• Flash drive/memory stick
• Google Docs (does auto-save frequently)
• CD
• Email it to yourself

Unsafe:

• Saving to desktop only (can be lost in an outage)
• Documents folder only

Theater Arts 61A "Ancient & Medieval Drama" assignment

Here are a few Cruzcat subject headings for an assignment for Theater Arts 61A "Ancient & Medieval Drama". They have to find a medieval play (500-1500) and then a modern production of it. It would probably be helpful for them to have some context for the medieval version.

• Drama, Medieval
• Theater--History--Medieval, 500-1500
• Theater--England--History--Medieval, 500-1500
• English drama--to 1500 (there is one subheading for "modernized versions"
• Christian drama, Latin (Medieval and Modern)
• Theater and society--England--to 1500

Reference material:

A companion to the medieval theatre
McH Ref PN2152.C66 1989

McHenry Roving Information Student schedule: FALL 2012

McHenry Library Roving Information Student schedule through Friday, December 7th
(also posted behind the Circ Desk and included online in the Library Ref Desk calendar):

Monday:
5-7pm Alejandra
7-9pm Brandon

Tuesday:
6-8pm Pati
8-10pm Brandon

Wednesday:
4-6pm Alejandra
7-9pm Brandon

Thursday:
6-7pm Pati
7-8pm Alejandra

Friday:
4-5pm Pati & Alejandra
5-6pm Pati
6-8pm Brandon

Sunday:
3-5pm Brandon

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Laura

Netflix "watch instantly" issue using Firefox on Macs

From Fish Phipps, IT:

For those who may not be aware, 'watch instantly' on Netflix does not work well in Firefox on the iMacs. This is an issue that can generate a lot of patron complaints so here's the 411:

Short version: If Netflix doesn't work on the Macs you have two options: Reboot and/or use Safari.

Long version: Netflix uses MS Silverlight for it's DRM and it seems that when parental controls are enabled on the macs (we use parental controls to control patron access to applications) that Silverlight and Firefox do not play well together. What usually happens is that when we are creating a new master image for all the machines we make sure that all the plugins are working but there are almost always issues with Firefox and Silverlight that, sooner or later, requires a reboot. Add the fact that after some random number of days/weeks later watching Netflix becomes totally broken in Firefox. This is due to changes made by either Netflix or MS on the server end as nothing has been changed on the machines. I am running some updates on a master image right now for the media center and it looks like I can't get Netflix to work at all in the latest version of Ffirefox. Point people to Safari if they wish to watch Netflix.

"Recently Returned" status in Cruzcat

Here are the definitions of "Recently Returned" status in the Cruzcat catalog:

McHenry Reserves: 45 minutes
S&E Reserves: 15 minutes
S&E laptops: 15 minutes
everything else: 24 hours

Quick guide to finding film reviews

This post is not an exhaustive guide, but provides a couple of tips and quick strategies to get you out of a jam with a question.

Search tips:  

• A "contemporary" film review is one that was published around the film's release date.
• If you don't know a film's release date, Wikipedia is quick and handy for this task.
• Always put the title of your film in quotes to keep the words together.
• If the film title was also a book, add the word "film" or your keyword search.

Here are two quick strategies using the film "American Graffiti" (released: August 1973) as an example:

Academic Search Complete:

• in the top search box type: "american graffiti"
• in the 2nd search box type: review
• leave it on "Select a field" for largest search
• limit the published date from "1973" to "1974"
• results: 13 
• click on UC-eLinks if no PDF or full text link is present (click here for how-to guide)

Cruzcat, for reviews in print:

• do a title search for "Film Review" (McH Stacks PN1993.F624)
• we have volumes for 1944-1992, so this is good for older films
• look up the title of the film in the index
• patron can photocopy or scan pages

For more film review sources, go to the Film & Digital Media Research Guide, and click on the articles tab, and use the search tips above.