Theater, Dance, and Media at Harvard

To find information on the life and work of a playwright, performer, director, designer, or other person in the performing arts, consult secondary sources such as these:

• Biographies (Search for the person's name in HOLLIS)
• Biographic databases:
  • Current Biography Illustrated
  • American National Biography
  • African American Biographical Database
  • Oxford African American Studies Center
  • Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
  • Dictionary of Irish Biography
  • Biography and Genealogy Master Index
  • World Biographical Information System
• Websites of contemporary personalities, e.g. Pina Bausch and Robert Wilson
• The John Johnson Collection: An Archive of Printed Ephemera (search for playbills and other documents by the person's name)
• For music and dance personalities, consult:
  • Oxford Music Online
  • The International Encyclopedia of Dance (ONLINE)
• Journal articles via e-resources such as:
  • Performing Arts Periodicals Database
  • International Bibliography of Theatre and Dance (IBTD)
  • JSTOR Performing Arts
  • Project Muse
  • Theatre in Context
  • Oxford Reference Online: Performing Arts
  • The New York Times and other newspapers (search by title in HOLLIS, in Chronicling America, or in Google News)
  • Google Scholar
  • MLA International Bibliography

The lives and careers of people in the theatre can be documented with various types of primary sources, all of which are represented in the Harvard Theatre Collection. Primary sources found in the Theatre Collection include: 

• Newspaper Clippings
• Theatre Reviews (also available in E-Resources, above)
• Playbills (organized by title of production, date, and theatre)
• Prints & Photographs
• Posters
• Interviews
• Letters

Some of these resources are individually cataloged in HOLLIS.  Others are arranged in larger series that are catalogued only at a summary level. You can request that library staff search for sources on a particular person. Fill in the necessary information on the Special Collections Request System, including the series call number (a list of call numbers is in the Instructions for requesting items from a series). Be sure to include the person's name in the "Volume/Box/Folder/Item" field. For more information on filling out the form, see Placing Requests.

Selected secondary sources:

• David Garrick and the Birth of Modern Theatre, by Jean Benedetti
• Garrick, by Ian McIntyre

Primary Sources:

• The Theatre Collection holds manuscripts, prints, portraits, and a life mask of the English actor. The Collection itself was founded in 1901 with a gift of 219 engraved portraits of Garrick.