Drama Online is an award-winning digital library of nearly 3,500 playtexts, over 400 audio plays, 365 hours of video and over 450 books of criticism and performance practice from leading theatre publishers and companies. Together, these resources offer a complete multimedia experience of theatre. Designed to meet the full range of teaching needs for theatre studies, literature courses and drama schools, individual collections can be purchased separately to tailor Drama Online to your institution’s specializations.

The Core Collection on Drama Online features the pre-eminent theatre lists of Bloomsbury’s Methuen Drama and Arden Shakespeare imprints as well as those of Faber & Faber. It also includes production photos from the Victoria and Albert Museum and The American Shakespeare Center. Further playtext collections include Nick Hern Books, Aurora Metro Books and Playwrights Canada Press.

The platform also offers collections of filmed live performances including those from leading theatres such as Shakespeare’s Globe, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre (see below for a full listing of these), as well as a wealth of audio plays from L.A. Theatre Works.

Available now for purchase via annual subscription and perpetual access at institutions worldwide.

Features and Benefits

• Interactive Transcript Player: Full transcripts are available for all video content, with real-time tracking of lines spoken, automatic text scrolling, hyperlinked text for easy navigation to the relevant timestamp, and a ‘search transcript’ function
• Play Finder: Select plays based on cast size, gender of roles, word count, period, and playwright
• Related Content: All content on Drama Online is linked by genre, period, and theme keywords, making it easy to discover and compare and contrast works for projects and research
• Personalization Features: Save searches, highlight and annotate text, and bookmark content
• Monologue Search: Find monologues by keyword, gender, and word count
• Character Grid: Each play includes a character grid that shows character appearances by part and scene with circles that correspond in size to the number of lines spoken, showing how and when characters interact
• Words and Speeches Graph: Each play includes a bar graph showing the number of words in each scene by total or by individual character
• Develop a Part Book: View lines and stage directions for individual roles
• Create bespoke video clips: Create and save video clips to support teaching and learning
• Read annotated plays intuitively: The seamless eReader includes in-text annotations and citations, with page numbers and line numbers
• Performance Rights Information: Each play includes production enquiry information on who owns rights for the play and how to contact them