About 

A unique way to study drama.

Drama Online introduces new writers alongside the most iconic names in playwriting history, providing contextual and critical background through scholarly works and practical guides.

Our constantly growing collection meets the full range of teaching needs for theatre studies, literature courses and drama schools. From the epic to the monologue; ensemble to one-person plays; comedy to tragedy; the historical to the contemporary; and from the highly political to the profoundly personal, there is plenty to discover.

Our unique Play Tools with Character Grids, Words and Speech graphs and Part Books offer a new way to engage with plays for close study or for performance.

Enjoy access to the finest drama texts:

• From Aeschylus to the present day.

• Student editions, scholarly works and first night programme texts.

• The internationally renowned Arden Shakespeare Series.           

• Realist works from Ibsen and Chekhov.

• Major foreign works in translation: Bertolt Brecht, Luigi Pirandello, Eduardo De Filippo, Frank Wedekind and more.

• Comic masterpieces from Oscar Wilde and Noël Coward.

• Modern classics from Tom Stoppard, Alan Bennett, Caryl Churchill, Simon Stephens, Mark Ravenhill, Edward Bond, Alan Ayckbourn, Harold Pinter, Christopher Hampton, Brian Friel, Willy Russell, John Osborne, David Greig, David Harrower, April De Angelis, David Hare, Anthony Neilson, Shelagh Stephenson, David Eldridge and many more.

• A continually growing collection of the very latest contemporary writers including Polly Stenham, Katori Hall, D.C. Moore, James Graham, Rebecca Lenkiewicz and Lucy Prebble.
  

The collection features the pre-eminent theatre lists of Methuen Drama, the Arden Shakespeare and Faber and Faber as well as production photos from the Victoria and Albert Museum and will be continually updated. Drama Online is developed in partnership by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc and Faber and Faber Ltd. Learn more about our content partners. 

Drama Online will launch with initial content and will be continually added to throughout 2013. View the title and author list for the 2013 collection.

Accompanied by theory and practice.

Drama Online offers expert guidance in the form of scholarly notes, annotated texts, critical analysis and contextual information making this an essential study tool that meets the full range of drama teaching needs. Critical interpretations, theatre history surveys and major reference works on authors, movements, practitioners, periods and genres are included alongside performance and practitioner texts, acting and backstage guides. 

• Detailed encyclopaedic information
• Overviews of major concepts, topics and issues
  
• Surveys of theatre institutions, countries, genres and movements
• Biographical entries on key performers, playwrights, directors, designers, choreographers and composers
• Synopses of significant plays
• Critical works on major playwrights
• Original works from theatre practitioners
• Core craft skills: acting, design, directing, lighting etc.

With production stills from the V&A. 

Key Features

Discover

• Search across full text 
• Filter search results by content type, genre, period, author, setting and theme 
  
• Conduct free searches for plays and monologues using cast size and roles filters 
• View associated works using the Drama Online Related Content function
• Browse works by playwright or practitioner, genre and period
• View play descriptions, author biogs and genre guides for free
• Navigate the user interface simply and intuitively – easily accessible from VLEs
  
• Regularly updated with new content: contemporary plays, images and new collections

• View texts in the Drama Online Reader, an uncluttered e-reading environment 
• See plays with their original pagination and lineation 
  
• Mouse over text to reveal scholarly annotations: commentary and footnotes
• Hide and reveal table of contents as you wish
• Conduct searches within the specific text you are reading

• Sign up for personalisation tools: Bookmarks and Notes
• Save extracts and make notes against the text, using tags to differentiate between projects
• Use citation tools to help with essay preparation
• Save searches and receive emails notifying you when new content is added

• View information on cast size and gender of roles
  
• Find out who to contact for performance rights with Production Enquiry
  
• See how and when characters interact with the Play Tools Character Grid
  
• Develop a Part Book to view the lines for single characters – use for rehearsal or character analysis
  
• View the size of a role with bar charts representing the lines and speeches for each character
• Theatre Craft books offer advice on staging and performing

For Librarians:

• Cross referencing via DOI (Digital Object Identifiers) and OpenURLs
  
• Industry standard access: unlimited concurrent access via IP recognition, ATHENS/Shibboleth, library cards, and username and password for remote users
  
• COUNTER compliant usage statistics and library branding
  
• MARC21 records available on request
  
• Online help and customer support

What people are saying about Drama Online.

'I am amazed and delighted to learn about Drama Online. Surely this is the best expression to date of the digital revolution as far as literary studies are concerned. What a terrific resource this will be for students, teachers, theatre practitioners, and the general reader. As far as Shakespeare is concerned it will show us the human endeavour that made him possible and the subsequent drama his works continue to inspire'. 
Dr Paul Edmondson, Head of Learning and Research, The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust 

'With instant search access to quite literally hundreds of plays, and reference works Drama Online is fast becoming the essential site for theatre and performance'. Geoffrey Colman, Head of Acting, Central School of Speech and Drama

'The new Drama Online library website is the next generation of sophisticated online tools for students, actors, researchers, librarians, and lovers of theatre. Take Methuen Drama, Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury and Faber, with their extraordinary collections and preeminent scholarship. Combine their resources. Place them into an elegant, intuitive and deep interface. And watch this become the most important bookmark on your browser'. 
Professor Rocco Dal Vera, University of Cincinnati

'I am excited and eager to explore and research this new digital resource. I anticipate using Drama Online regularly'.  Jeffrey Bihr, actor, director, composer, Stanford University Drama

'I particularly look forward to the time saving and cross referencing aspects of the website. I look forward to having this kind of resource at my fingertips and will certainly recommend it to my actors and students in rehearsal and the classroom'. 
Beth McGuire, Assistant Professor, Yale School of Drama 

'Drama Online – curated by some of the wisest publishers in the business – sets the stage for a new generation of readers, writers, and thespians to not only find, but also actively work with plays. It is a new, exciting way to engage with the stage, while never losing sight of the treasured heritage of theater and the performing arts. As a college English instructor, I can tell that this resource will be a goldmine'. 
Michael Arnzen, Professor of English, Seton Hill University

'Bloomsbury Publishing and Faber and Faber create something unique with Drama Online. By combining the resources of Methuen Drama, Arden Shakespeare and the Faber catalogue in a single website that provides filtered browsing and powerful search and navigation capabilities, Drama Online becomes the first stop of choice for drama teachers, students, scholars and practitioners. This is a brilliantly thought through and executed digital library providing both the opportunity of finding exactly what you are looking for and the possibility of encountering an unexpected revelation'.
Richard Brestoff, Professor of Drama, University of California, Irvine

'Drama Online promises to reinvent performance studies for a ground-breaking digital environment'.
T. Mera Moore Lafferty, Lecturer in Theatre Arts and Asian American Studies, University of Pennsylvania

Join Us!

Drama Online is distributed by Publishers Communications Group and available from Spring 2013.

• For General Queries: dramaonline@pcgplus.com

• For the United Kingdom and Europe: Jas Atwal, jatwal@pcgplus.com  +44 (0)1865397848

• For the U.S. and Canada: Kyley Caldwell, kcaldwell@pcgplus.com +1 617 395 4056

• For Latin America: Lilian Pessoa, lpessoa@pcgplus.com +55 11 2337 0310

• For India: Dilip Kumar Jha, dkumar@pcgplus.com +91 9891096706

• For China: Joseph Qiao, jia.liu@digitalpublishing.cn  0086 10 6439 8332*813

• For All Other Regions: dramaonline@pcgplus.com

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Image credits on this page: 1. © Tristram Kenton/Lebrecht Music & Arts, 2. © Graham Brandon, V & A Images.