Research Guides: Theatre History and Research: Scenic Design

Find historic Book Reviews/Art Reviews/Play Reviews/Movie Reviews

ProQuest Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Digital archive offering full-text and full-image articles from the New York Times (1851 - 4 years ago) and the Los Angeles Times (1881 - 24 years ago). Both newspapers may be searched at once.
See ProQuest Global Newsstream for more recent content.

Limit your search by date, type your play in "quote marks " and add the word review.

Example 1: "Porgy and Bess" review [put the year - year dates in ]

Example 2 "Hairy Ape" review

This trick also works well in the following:

JSTOR This link opens in a new window
JSTOR is a full-text database of scholarly journals and ebooks. Journal content typically starts with the earliest volume but does not include the most recent 3-5 years. JSTOR also includes the entire database of rights-cleared images formerly found in Artstor, as well as images and primary source collections contributed by member organizations.
Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive index of peer-reviewed scholarly journals in social sciences, humanities, general science, education and multicultural studies, as well as popular magazines published from 1990-present. Provides Full-text access to peer reviewed articles from thousands of journals.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Digital archive offering full-text and full-image articles from the New York Times (1851 - 4 years ago) and the Los Angeles Times (1881 - 24 years ago). Both newspapers may be searched at once.
See ProQuest Global Newsstream for more recent content.

Useful Print Book: Theatrical Design in the Twentieth Century: An Index to Photographic Reproductions of Scenic Designs
This 1996 title lists books that have photographs of scenic designs of twentieth century play productions. Search the title of the play in the book and the index will tell you other books that have photos of the play (and the page #) and then you look for that book. in OneSearch Call number: PN2091.S8 T47 1996

JSTOR Image Library This link opens in a new window
You can search by designer, play, playwright or other relevant terms. The images here have important information for proper identifying the authority of the picture (unlike most images in Google images).

Use Google Magazines
After you run a keyword search:
1) Click on Tools
2) Under ANY DOCUMENT select MAGAZINE
Wikimedia Commons
A database of almost 6 million freely usable image material.
Google Image
As if you wouldn't already use this hah! - But often it is hard to verify the accuracy of the information the images are tagged with, so hard to cite; also, for re-use, copyright can be very sketchy.

Ebook Central This link opens in a new window
150,000 ebooks, most are keyword searchable!
SpringerLink This link opens in a new window
Book chapters, books, journal articles.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Scholarly books and articles, with some current content and lots going way back.
Project MUSE This link opens in a new window
Scholarly books and articles. To get books click Books on left column.
Wiley Online Library This link opens in a new window
Books and Articles. To get books, after first keyword search, click BOOKS in right column.