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.