During my first two blogs, I think you all got to know a little bit more about theatre. Especially, about the Golden Age in Spain. Of course, there is still much more to discover. In this blog, I’ll try to give you some good websites which might be handy when you try to find out something knew about theatre.
Let me first start with some dictionaries. Before you want to lose yourself in the wonders of theatre, you need to know the main concepts and theories. For this, you can use some international dictionaries like the Performing Arts Encyclopaedia, specialised in theatre. More specific for Spain you can choose to use the “Diccionario del teatralizarte” or you can just check-out this amazing “Diccionario técnico del teatro”. The first link is originally from the Library of Congress, which make people explore not only theatre, but also music and dance. It’s a really handy tool, because the site is divided in different parts like “Performing Arts Resource Guide”, “Special presentations”, “Databases and online catalogues”,… The dictionary of “teatralizarte” is very structured. They made different dictionaries for each letter, so it’s easy to find the concept or word, you are looking for. Last, but not least: the technical dictionary of theatre. This is actually not a website but a pdf-file with the most important words, alphabetically organised.
Besides having knowledge about concepts and words of theatre, it is also very important to have some information about the most important people in that business like for example directors, writers, actors, historical figures,… To look up information like that you can use the “Enciclopedia biográfica”. On this site, you just typ the name of the person you are looking for and his/her biography shows up immediately. Not only will you get a review of their life, they also mention the most important trophies the person has won, the most popular workpieces, their inspiration, their colleagues,…
The most important (and fun!) part about theatre though, is the plays. As a theatre freak, I know a lot of good websites in Belgium where you can find and read plays online for free. Most of them are from publishing companies, like “Vink”, “Jongeneel Gouda”, “CTS Producties”,… but you can always choose for online libraries as well such as the “Theatre Bib”, “Theatre Centre”, “Collection guide”,… On all of these websites you can search by different queries like for example by the number of females, the number of males, the length of the play, the genre, the writer,… Because of this, it is really easy to find a fitting play as a theatre company.
I tried to find some international libraries as well where you could search and read theatre plays, but they were hard to find. Nevertheless, I found a really good English online library: the London library. Unfortunately, you can’t search for plays by different queries, like you can on the Dutch websites. However, you do can search through books, collections, special collections, newspapers,… Besides the English libraries, I also searched for Spanish ones. I couldn’t find any online free library that offers you plays to read or even giving a short summary. The only websites with plays, are referring to buy them immediately. If you would be interesting in this, you could go to the “Libreria de teatro”, “Troa Librerías”, the “Centro de documentación teatral”,… On these pages you will find direct links to buy different plays. Unfortunatley, you have to know the play in advance because you can’t see a short summary or the number of players, the genre,…
With these references, I hope I gave you guys something to do for the next couple of years. Enjoy your new theatre knowledge and loose yourselves in one of the millions of plays available on the internet!
See you next week,
Jana De Tandt