LibGuides: Theatre: Media

Featured Streaming Media

Try these videos to get started. Must access on campus or login with your COM account for off campus access.

Want more on finding media? Try Articles & Media.

Chaos and Order: Making American Theater (01:07:42) The American Repertory Theater is one of the most respected and innovative dramatic institutions in the United States. Through the prism of the A.R.T., this program explores the organizational and creative challenges facing today’s theater community and describes the flexibility and resilience arts groups must have to survive in today’s cultural climate. F. Murray Abraham, Debra Winger, and numerous other renowned performers—along with groundbreaking directors Andrei Serban, Peter Sellars, and Robert Woodruff—join A.R.T. technicians and artisans in illuminating the precarious condition of American theater. Tony Award–winning actress Cherry Jones narrates.
Japan's Kabuki Theater (06:11) Today, all Kabuki parts are played by males. The most famous of the actors is one of Japan's Living Treasures. Actors in stylized costumes and make-up act out a story that a narrator provides.
Onstage (01:56:17) This program focuses on what makes a production successful, featuring segments on character interpretation, timing, underplaying, movement, positioning, dialects and accents, and other principles and elements of acting.
Series: A Search for an American Voice in Theater This extraordinary six-part series traces the history of stage drama and the American imagination, from pre-Revolutionary days to the late 20th century, through expert interviews and a rich trove of archival images. Using theater as a mirror, each program reveals the ongoing evolution of American culture and a society's artistic aspirations. 6-part series.
Series: Grotowski: A Practical Guide World famous theatre practitioner Jerzy Grotowski has had an enormous and positive influence on contemporary theatre. This two-part resource explores his life and work and shows how his ideas and approaches can be used by students and teachers to create powerful and successful performances. Through the use of archive performance footage, workshops, demonstrations, interviews, and examples of Grotowski inspired pieces, these programs enables students to apply Grotowski's visionary insights to their own devised and scripted work. 2 Part Series.
Series: Theaterland The first ever documentary that goes behind the scenes at one of London’s premiere West End venues - the Theater Royal Haymarket. The series was shot over six months during 2009 following the Theater’s busy daily life from front of house team dealing with the public to the production teams back stage working to get a new production up and running. It also includes the arrival of a new artistic director in the shape of Sean Mathias who takes up his role in January 2009.
Working with Pinter: A Master Class for the Stage (56:17) Viewed by many as the preeminent dramatist of our time, Nobel laureate Harold Pinter was also an accomplished actor, steeped in the relationship between text and performance. In this program, produced two years prior to his death, he advises a group of actors as they conduct staged readings of scenes from his plays. Students will discover Pinter’s thoughts on rewrites, blocking, pregnant pauses, staying true to the text, the role of the audience, the value of “liver and lights” over technical prowess, and more.

Broadway Digital Archive

From Films on Demand. Full Length Broadway productions as well as a few shorter clips. The videos below are a small sample. Click on the Broadway Digital Archive Collection link to see the entire collection.

Want more on FOD? Go to the How to Use Films on Demand (FOD) Guide. Must access on campus or login with your COM account for off campus access.

Broadway Digital Archive Collection
Death of a Salesman (1:47:32)
Glass Menagerie (1:44:37)
The Iceman Cometh (03:26:49) Jason Robards Jr. became an overnight star with his indelible performance as the glad-handing, doom-ridden Hickey in the legendary 1956 Circle in the Square revival of Eugene O'Neill's towering masterpiece (first staged in 1939). In his harrowing drama, O'Neill shines a harsh but compassionate spotlight on the failed lives, empty hopes, and perpetual pipe dreams of an assortment of down-and-out denizens of a seedy saloon, set in New York in 1912. Their sad but complacent existences are rattled when Hickey arrives for his annual bender a changed man—forswearing alcohol and preaching a deliverance from "the lie of the pipe dream." As Variety originally wrote, "this 'Iceman' was a landmark for the video medium, a reference point for greatness in TV drama." 1960-61 New York Area Emmy for Most Outstanding Local Program WNTA. Cast: Jason Robards Jr., Robert Redford, James Broderick, Myron McCormick, Tom Pedi, Farrell Pelly, Ronald Radd.
Much Ado About Nothing (02:40:37)

More Media

In addition to streaming media, we have DVDs, images, audio and more media.

Becket
Based upon the play "Becket" by Jean Anouilh.
Death of a Salesman
Hamlet
Henry V "Prince Hal" has ascended to the throne of England. He proceeds to assert his hereditary claim to the throne of France, gathers an army and embarks on a course that will lead to one of England's greatest battlefield triumphs--the bloody Battle of Agincourt--and forever change the face of Europe. King Henry V unites his people, deals justly with traitors, leads his soldiers to victory, and in the end ensures the peace by marrying the French princess Katherine.
Much Ado About Nothing
Othello In this dramatization of William Shakespeare's tragedy a great man's vanity is manipulated by a jealous aide to bring about his downfall. Betrayal, deception and murder end the friendship between Othello and Iago and culminate in the tragic death of Desdemona.
Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie