Research and Course Guides: Theatre: Multimedia

Theatre Images

Drawings, paintings and photographs can be a great source of visual information about architecture, styles and fashions, economic classes in a society, the cities, neighborhoods, modes of transportation, sports, hobbies, pasttimes and other features which might be related to the setting or the plot of a play. The following large collections of images are available online.

Copyright Issues

Various types of copyright and licenses apply to the images. If you intend to do more than print a copy for your own use or simply get ideas from them, it's best to use images which are "in the public domain," meaning that their copyrights have expired, or images which are covered by one of the Creative Commons licenses which allows public use and/or redistribution of the images.

AP Images
British Museum Images The British Museum, one of the oldest, largest and most famous museums in the world, holds objects and artworks dating from the 7th millennium BC to the present day, and covers all major world cultures. Images are licensed and may be purchased.
flickr Search flickr for user-submitted photos and videos. Search tags for words such as play titles, objects you might want to use as props, building names or types of architecture (house, church) etc. Watch for copyright restrictions. If you need copyright-free images, look for "Creative Commons" licensing which allows you to use a photo under certain guidelines.
flickr Search Creative Commons Images Only Limit your search for images on flickr to only those with Creative Commons licensing which allows re-use of the images.
Google Images - Advanced Search Google Images lets you search all of the images it finds for your topic or else restrict your search results to faces, photo content, line drawings or clip art. If you need non-copyrighted images, see the "Usage Rights" line and change the pull-down menu to "labeled for reuse." Then be sure to note the Creative Commons license type for each image you find in order to find out what (if any) limitations might be placed on its use by the image's owner.
Library of Congress: American Memory Collections These collections contain written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. They chronicle historical events, people, places, and ideas that have and continue to shape America.
Library of Congress: Theater & Dance Browse Library of Congress collections of historical texts, images and videos related to theatre, or search collections by names or topic words.
Life Magazine Photos on Google Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google. Collection covers people, places, events, sports, and culture.
MoMA Search collections of New York's Museum of Modern Art for images of actors, scenes, theaters and stages, etc. as they are depicted in drawings, paintings and photographs.
New York Public Library Digital Gallery - Arts & Literature Includes a number of theatre-related collections, for example "On Stage and Screen: Photograph File of the Billy Rose Theatre Collection," tens of thousands of photographs of actors and actresses, in character and as themselves, from the 19th century to recent years.
Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons let you search for images, videos and sounds which have been uploaded by users. If you plan to use the items you find for anything other than your personal use, be sure to note the "Licensing" notes under each image. They will tell you if the iimage is in the public domain (i.e. not copyrighted or copyright has expired) or if it is use is limited in any way by the owner of the image.

Videos & DVDs

To find DVDs in the library collection please view the Do you have ( _______ ) DVD? page

Google Videos Google Videos' search lets you limit your search results by duration, date and quality. (Once you've done your search, click "Search Tools" in the upper part of the page.) You can also limit your search to close captioned videos (Under "Search Tools," change the "All Videos" menu choice at top of page to "Closed Captions.") and videos on a particular website or domain address (Pull down the "Any source" menu choice and change it to youtube.com, france24.com, etc.).
Great Performances (PBS) Free full-length videos of several PBS programs online as well as numerous video clips . Here, watch Shakespeare's play "King Lear."
TED Talks on Theatre Videos of inspiring talks on theatre topics. Includes Patsy Rodenburg on "Why I Do Theater," Anna Deavere Smith's "American Character," and others.
Video Clips from the Tony Awards Includes video clips from the winning productions as well as behind the scenes, "Road to the Tonys," "About the Nominees" and more.
Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons let you search for images, videos and sounds which have been uploaded by users.
YouTube Edu Videos from university and college theatre departments and productions. Search YouTube Edu for words like theatre, theater, drama, acting technique, shakespeare, names of specific plays, whatever your interests are. And of course the regular youtube is a wonderful resource for entertainment, clips from TV shows like "Inside the Actor's Studio" as well as late night TV shows and much more.

Radio & TV

L.A. Theatre Works LATW produces and preserves significant works of dramatic literature on audio to assure the widest public access to these great works. Its Audio Theatre Collection currently includes over 200 titles. Its weekly live-performance radio broadcast, "The Play's the Thing," is accessible for streaming on the Internet at http://www.kpcc.org and http://www.kpfa.org, and is available for digital download at http://www.audible.com and http://www.mediabay.com.
L.A. Theatre Works "The Play's the Thing" podcasts "The Play's the Thing," produced by L.A. Theatre Works, is an award-winning and critically acclaimed weekly radio show, heard nationwide and overseas. The programs showcase the best of American and World drama, past and present, performed by top actors of stage and screen. Shows range from established works by Shakespeare, Shaw, Arthur Miller, and Wendy Wasserstein to new work by the hottest playwrights on the contemporary theatre scene.