Actors and Actresses:

Boucicault, Dion (Dion Boucicault Theatre Collection at the University of South Florida)

One of the largest public collections of Boucicault materials, purchased from his widow, Josephine Cheney Boucicault.  The collection consists of approximately 781 items, including printed and manuscript play scripts, stage directions, letters, and musical scores.  The collection also includes set design sketches, prompt books, photographs and select musical segments.  Most of USF's materials related to Boucicault's The Shaughraun have been digitized and are available online.

http://guides.lib.usf.edu/content.php?pid=48831&sid=359964

Boucicault, Dion (University of Kent, England, Special Collections)

The University of Kent Special Collections holds two significant collections of material about the playwright and actor Dionysius Lardner Boucicault (1820-1890), better known as Dion Boucicault. Items include programmes, playbills, letters and illustrations.  These collections focus on Boucicault's life and his work.  The Fawkes Boucicault Collection contains material gathered by Richard Fawkes for his book Dion Boucicault: a Biography (1979), while the Calthrop Boucicault Collection, collected by Boucicault's great-grandson, contains biographical material and items relating to Dion Boucicault's plays.

http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1089ukc-bouc

Macready, William Charles (Princeton University Collections)

Consists of selected correspondence, letters written by members of his family, and some letters, articles, and miscellaneous documents about him. A significant number of letters (45) are from Macready's friend, William Frederick Pollock.

http://diglib.princeton.edu/ead/getEad?eadid=TC042&kw=

Collections (Theatre):

Chicago Theater Collection  (Harold Washington Library Center)

The historical collection includes pre-fire imprints, and extensive runs of programs and scrapbooks recording productions in over 100 theaters from 1875 to 1956: neighborhood theaters, vaudeville and variety shows, minstrel shows, musical comedy theaters, and local stock companies.

http://www.chipublib.org/branch/details/library/harold-washington/p/spctheatrecoll/

Harvard Theatre Collection (Houghton Library)

Harvard Theatre Collection includes documentary material pertaining to the history of the performing arts, including the fields of theater, dance and ballet, and opera and musical theater, as well as many forms of popular entertainment, such as magic and conjuring, music hall and variety, pantomime and extravaganza, puppetry, toy theater, circuses and menageries, fairgrounds, pageants and outdoor drama, festivals and spectacles, film, and minstrelsy.

It also includes large numbers of rare books, manuscripts, prompt books, letters, contracts and documents, musical scores, original scene and costume designs, portraits, drawings, engravings and prints, caricatures, albums and extra-illustrated books, and audio and visual recordings, together with vast collections of programs and playbills, posters, play texts and libretti, engravings and prints, photographs, and sheet music, as well as figurines, medals and tokens, tickets and passes, souvenirs, personal artifacts and memorabilia, and extensive files of clippings, articles and pamphlets.  The collection also includes a large number of archives of personal and organizational papers, which preserve the legacies of many significant figures and institutions in the performing arts.

http://hcl.Harvard.edu/libraries/houghton/collections/htc/

Kent University (Templeman Library's theatre collection)

Contains material, inter al., on the Britannia Theatre, Hoxton, Boucicault (two collections) and plays (bound and unbound).

http://www.kent.ac.uk/library/specialcollections/theatre/

Ohio State University (Jerome Lawrence & Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute)

The Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute serves as an archive for performers, playwrights, choreographers, designers, producing organizations, and theatre and dance companies, among others, and advances the study and inspiration of the performing arts.  The collections include personal papers; organizational archives; costume, scene, lighting designs, and technical theatre documentation; costumes; models of stage sets and theatres; photographs; posters; artwork; film, videotape and sound recordings.

http://library.osu.edu/find/collections/theatre-research-institute

Ephemera Collections:

Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (The John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera)

The John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera offers a fresh view of British history through primary, uninterpreted printed documents which, produced for short-term use, have survived by chance.

http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/johnson

Carthalia (Theatres on Postcards)

Andreas Praefcke's postcard collection of theatres and concert halls worldwide.  The web site does not yet feature the entire collection, but there are 4300 images of over 1900 buildings in 100 countries.

http://www.andreas-praefcke.de/carthalia/

Evanion Collection of Ephemera

Over 2,000 adverts and posters from Victorian daily life, collected by the stage magician and ventriloquist, Henry Evans-Evanion.  A search box allows the user can find the items relating to theatre.

http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/evancoll/index.html

Florida, University of (Belknap Collection for the Performing Arts)

The Belknap Collection is an eclectic mixture of mainly non-book, primary research materials.  Nearly 85% of the collection is ephemera from 19th and 20th Century Europe and America.  The archive includes more than 60,000 playbills, programs, costume and stage designs, sheet music, theatrical scrapbooks, prints, etchings, drawings, photographs, posters, and scripts spanning all of the performing arts.  The Belknap Collection also includes essential reference books, rare and large pictorial books, and relevant performing arts periodicals.  The Ringling Theatre Collection is included.  It traces the history of stagecraft through Shakespearean prints, 18th, 19th and 20th century European and American handbills, posters and heralds, souvenir photographs and prints of the legendary performers of the past three centuries.

http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/spec/belknap/belknap.html

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (Billy Rose Theatre Collection)

The Billy Rose Theatre Collection of The New York Public Library is one of the largest and most comprehensive archives devoted to the theatrical arts.  Encompassing dramatic performance in all its diversity, the Collection is an indispensable resource for artists, writers, researchers, scholars, students, and the general public.

http://legacy.www.nypl.org/research/lpa/the/theabout.html

Theatre Ephemera

Site focuses on American theatre before 1900.  Scholars are invited to use the site.  The owner has not knowingly displayed copyrighted images.  Email questions or comments to: Rodney Higginbotham [r-higginbotham1@neiu.edu].  Ephemera consist of post, cabinet and tobacco cards, and cartes de visite.  There are links to other sites with theatre images.

http://www.neiu.edu/~rghiggin/ephem/Ephemera.html

Theatre Ephemera: Images of American Actors

A collection of images from nineteenth century theatre in the United States.

http://www.neiu.edu/~rghiggin/ephem/People.html

Journals, Magazines:

Artslynx International Arts Resources

The MASTER SITES collection takes you to the giant sites that link with theatre companies, etc, but other collections include resources that are hard to find on the other theatre collection sites.  This page is maintained by Richard Finkelstein.

http://www.xmarks.com/site/www.artslynx.org/theatre/

Plays and Playwrights:

Pinero, Arthur Wing (University of Rochester, New York, River Campus Libraries)

The two box collection consists mainly of correspondence between Sir Arthur Wing Pinero and his wife with members of English and American theatres.  Of special interest is a group of letters written in 1875 by Pinero and his friend Tom Tomlin when the former was a young actor in Liverpool and other provincial theatres.

http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?PAGE=1089

Professional Organizations:

American Society for Theatre Research

The American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) is a U.S.-based professional organization that fosters scholarship on worldwide theatre and performance, both historical and contemporary.

http://www.astr.org/

Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE)

The Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) is a comprehensive non-profit professional membership organization.  Founded in 1986, ATHE serves the interests of its diverse individual and organizational members, including college and university theatre departments and administrators, educators, graduate students, and theatre practitioners.

http://www.athe.org/

Educational Theatre Association

A professional organization for theatre educators providing professional development, advocacy, and networking support to its members.  EdTA operates the International Thespian Society, an honorary organization for high school and middle school theatre students.  It publishes Dramatics, a monthly magazine for students and teachers, and Teaching Theatre, a quarterly journal for theatre education professionals.  EdTA's annual Thespian Festival is the premiere showcase for high school theatre, drawing students and teachers from throughout the United States and abroad.

http://schooltheatre.org/

Resources:

British Library (Literary and Theatrical collections)

The theatre collections include plays submitted to the Lord Chamberlain's Office for examination and licensing between 1824 and 1968.  Plays submitted since 1968 under the terms of the Theatres Act of that year continue the collection up to the present day.  The Lord Chamberlain's Plays Project seeks to provide wider and more comprehensive access to a major collection of 19th-century drama.  The Lord Chamberlain's Plays licensed from 1852 to 1863 will now be searchable via the British Library's manuscript catalogue.  The catalogue descriptions will offer readers as much information as possible, including first performance dates, names of theatres and alternative published editions.

http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/manuscripts/mssliterarytheatre/msslittheatre.html

British Theatre Guide (Lord Chamberlain's Page)

Between 1737 and 1968, the Lord Chamberlain's office licensed and retained a copy of every play newly performed in London and later throughout the provinces as well.  There are 2,500 new electronic catalogue entries for manuscripts of the Lord Chamberlain's Plays collection covering the decade from 1852 to 1863.  The entries are unique in the British Library's catalogues as they include keywords, in addition to the standard information about titles, authors, where the play was performed and whether it was printed.  There are many links, most of them to contemporary web sites.

http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/news/lordchambplays.htm

Iconography – Golden Age of Theatre History (1880-1920)

Images from British and American theatre with details about their lives and careers.  Maintained by Sydney Higgins, Professor of English, Università di Camerino, Italy.

http://www.the-camerino-players.com/britishtheatre/

Music Hall and Theatre History Site

Dedicated to Arthur Lloyd (1839-1904).  This website began life back in 2001 when Matthew Lloyd decided that his great grandfather, a popular music hall performer, should have a presence on the Internet.  Consists of press cuttings, programs, posters, books, magazines, postcards, and original song sheets.  It has extensive iconography and history of music halls.

http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/

New York University -- 19th Century Theatre History Research Guide

A guide for finding bibliographies, indexes, books, articles and newspapers relating to 19th century theatre.

http://nyu.libguides.com/19thcenturytheatre

SIBMAS - International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts

The SIBMAS International Directory of Performing Arts Collections and Institutions lists over 7000 international institutions with material relating to the performing arts.

http://www.sibmas.org/English/sibmas.html

Stetson University, Florida

Designed to help the user find theatre information on the Internet.  It is designed to be a guide rather than a listing of resources and is performance oriented.  Main sections online indexes and databases, actors and acting, plays and playwrights, electronic texts, journals and images.  Does not include commercial sites.  This page is maintained by Ken McCoy.

http://www2.stetson.edu/csata/thr_guid.html

Theatre Database (19th Century)

http://www.theatredatabase.com/19th_century/

Theatre History on the Web

A comprehensive collection of links to theatre resources from the beginning of drama to the contemporary period.  Maintained by Jack Walcott (retired), School of Drama, University of Washington.

http://www.videoccasions-nw.com/history/jack.html

UK Web Archives (Arts and Humanities) Theatre

The UK Web Archive contains UK websites that publish research, that reflect the diversity of lives, interests and activities throughout the UK, and demonstrate web innovation.  This includes "grey literature" sites those that carry briefings, reports, policy statements, and other ephemeral but significant forms of information.

The archive is free to view, accessed directly from the Web itself and, since archiving began in 2004, has collected thousands of websites.  The theatre section has sixty-five sites on all facets of the theatre.

http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/subject/65/page/1

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

A repository of artifacts from the reign of Queen Victoria.  The collection of nineteenth-century theatre materials is extensive.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/0-9/19th-century-theatre/

Victorian Web (Literature, History and Culture in the Age of Victoria)

Links to many articles written about music, theatre and popular entertainment.  Main sections include: composers, drama and dramatists, genre, themes, popular entertainment and a bibliography.

http://www.victorianweb.org/mt/index.html

Scholarships in Theatre Studies:

Scholarship Hunter

Lists a few scholarships in music, theatre and performance, and music.

http://www.scholarshiphunter.com/musictheatrescholarship.html

Michigan, University of

http://www.music.umich.edu/prospective_students/admissions/ug/schol_finaid.htm

Michigan State University

http://theatre.msu.edu/Department/Academics/Scholarships/

Northern Arizona University

http://www.cal.nau.edu/theatre/scholarships.asp

Texas Christian University

http://www.theatre.tcu.edu/Prog-Scholarships.html

Tyler Junior College

http://www.tjc.edu/Theatre/Scholarships.php

Western Michigan University

http://www.wmich.edu/theatre/prospective-students/scholarships/

Theatre Societies:

American Society for Theatre Research

The American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) is a U.S.-based professional organization that fosters scholarship on worldwide theatre and performance, both historical and contemporary.

http://www.astr.org/

Canadian Association for Theatre Research

http://www.catr-acrt.ca/

Indian Society For Theatre Research (ISTR)

http://www.theatrewithoutborders.com/node/1121

Irish Society for theatre research

http://istr-ctae.com/page20.htm

Society for Theatre Research (London)

http://www.str.org.uk/

Stagecraft and Technical Theatre:

Theatrecrafts.com (Glossary of Technical Theatre Terms)

Theatrecrafts.com has been online since 1997 and is a developing resource for theatre technicians.  It claims to be the biggest technical theatre glossary on the Web with over 1630 terms listed.  Terms can be traced by word search, browsing by letter, random word finder or category search.  The glossary is edited by Jon Primrose, Technical Manager at the University of Exeter Drama Department in the UK.  (It is not connected to Theatre Crafts, which has been superseded by Live Design magazine.)

http://www.theatrecrafts.com/glossary.php

Theatres:

Adelphi Theatre

Brief history (by Really Useful Theatre Group).

http://www.reallyuseful.com/theatres/adelphi-theatre/

Covent Garden

History and architecture

http://www.coventgardenlondonuk.com/history-architecture

Drury Lane

Brief history (by Really Useful Theatre Group).

http://www.reallyuseful.com/theatres/theatre-royal-drury-lane/

Theatre Royal Haymarket

The Haymarket was permitted to stage legitimate drama during the summer months when the Patent theatres were closed.

http://www.theatrehistory.com/british/haymarket001.html