Drama Online is an award-winning digital resource designed for literature and drama courses. Its collections are price individually and are available via a perpetual access based model or on subscription to schools, colleges and higher education institutions.
Playtext Collections
Core Collection: Originally created by Bloomsbury Publishing and Faber and Faber, the Core Collection currently includes over 1,700 playtexts from Methuen Drama, The Arden Shakespeare, and Faber and Faber. The platform also includes 700 images from the Victoria and Albert Museum and American Shakespeare Centre.
From the works of Aeschylus in 5th Century BC to the present day, Drama Online provides unique access to the finest drama literature. Titles include the most highly regarded scholarly editions of Shakespeare — The Arden Shakespeare Series — as well as works from Henrik Ibsen, Bertolt Brecht, Harold Pinter, Oscar Wilde, Caryl Churchill, Simon Stephens, David Mamet and Katori Hall. The collection is continually updated with the very latest writing from new and established writers.
Nick Hern Books: Over 570 modern plays from specialist theatre publisher Nick Hern Books featuring pre-eminent playwrights including Howard Brenton, Jez Butterworth, and Caryl Churchill.
Playwrights Canada Press: Over 175 plays from established and emerging Canadian playwrights including Daniel Maclvor, Hannah Mosovitch, and Colleen Murphy.
Aurora Metro Books: With over 125 drama plays in print, including works from Robin Soans, Manjula Padmanabhan, and Germaine Greer, Aurora Metro Books has built a wide-ranging and highly contemporary list of new drama, with collections of women’s drama, international drama and drama by black and Asian writers.
Audio Plays
L.A. Theatre Works: 400 audio recordings from the most important audio theatre company in America. Highlights include iconic modern literary works, Pulitzer prize-winning titles and leading American playwrights such as Arthur Miller, David Mamet, and Eugene O’Neill.
Critical Studies and Performance Practice
Critical Studies & Performance Practice: Features over 370 academic eBooks from the prestigious Methuen Drama and The Arden Shakespeare imprints, offering invaluable critical, contextual and pedagogic content from leading voices in theatre, performance and Shakespeare studies. The title are grouped under Context and Criticism or Theatre Craft.
PATAZ: Physical Actor Training – an online A-Z establishes a foundation for physical acting through 60 dynamic physical actor training videos with accompanying audio commentary, reflection and texts for today’s physical actor, teacher and trainer.
Video Collections
The National Theatre Collection: Drawing on 10 years of NT Live broadcasts, alongside high-quality recordings never previously seen outside of the NT’s Archive, the collection is now complete and contains 30 filmed performances including comedies, 20th Century classics, Shakespeare plays and literary adaptations.
The Donmar Shakespeare Trilogy on Screen: Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female trilogy, Julius Caesar, Henry IV, and The Tempest, set in a women’s prison. Led by renowned actor Harriet Walter, with an ethnically diverse cast drawn partly from ex-offenders, it stunned audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Classic Spring Oscar Wilde Collection: 4 great Victorian plays performed by Dominic Dromgoole’s new theatre company, founded as he left Shakespeare's Globe: A Woman of No Importance, Lady Windermere’s Fan, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest.
The RSC Live Collection: The Royal Shakespeare Company creates theatre at its best. Made in Stratford- upon-Avon and shared around the world, the RSC produces an inspirational artistic programme each year, setting Shakespeare in context alongside the work of his contemporaries and today’s writers.
RSC Live 1 (2013-17 productions) 17 films from 2013 to the cutting-edge 2016-17 production of The Tempest starring Simon Russell-Beale.
RSC Live 2 (2018-19 productions) 9 films from 2018 and 2019, including Twelfth Night starring comedy icon Adrian Edmondson.
The Hollow Crown: Shakespeare’s history plays featuring a star-studded cast including: Benedict Cumberbatch, Ben Whishaw, Judi Dench, Hugh Bonneville, and Tom Hiddleston.
BBC Drama Films & Documentaries: Film adaptions of core curriculum plays from Sophocles, Anton Chekhov, Henrik Isben and Oscar Wilde alongside modern classics such as Copenhagen, by playwright Michael Frayn, starring Daniel Craig.
Shakespeare's Globe On Screen 1 (2008-2015): 21 films recorded live on the Globe stage from leading actors including Mark Rylance, Stephen Fry, and Roger Allam’s Olivier Award-winning Falstaff in Henry IV.
Shakespeare’s Globe on Screen 2 (2016-2018): Features 9 landmark productions, including The Duchess of Malfi (2015), the first production from the indoor Jacobean theatre, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.
Stage on Screen: Major early modern drama titles staged and filmed specifically for educational use: Doctor Faustus, The Duchess of Malfi, Volpone, and School for Scandal. Accompanied by cast and crew interviews.
Maxine Peake as Hamlet: The first online debut for this sell-out hit starring Maxine Peake.
Shakespeare in the Present: A Shakespeare acting masterclass from top international acting coach Patsy Rodenburg starring Joseph Fiennes.
Shakespeare’s Heroes and Villains: Steven Berkoff, world-renowned writer, director, and actor known for his villainous Hollywood roles in Octopussy, Beverly Hills Cop, Rambo and The Krays, lifts the complex villains of Shakespeare from page to stage. This vividly direct and compelling film offers a unique exploration and analysis of Iago, the Macbeths, Shylock, Richard III, plus several heroes including Henry V, Coriolanus, and Oberon.
Collections are priced individually to allow institutions to select only those that support specific needs.
For additional information on Drama Online, please contact: Americas: [email protected] UK and Rest of World: [email protected] Australia and New Zealand: [email protected] Schools: UK, US International Schools, and Sixth Form Colleges: [email protected]