For your final group project, you have been asked to create a portfolio project around a full-length play.
Your groups' objectives are to read the play, engage in research surrounding the original context of the play (including its production history and critical reception), and then work together to imagine a production of the play and the design choices that would best support a production now.
Use this guide to find historical and cultural research, production history, and visual/design research related to your production concept.
In this section of the portfolio, you will want to give the reader a sense of the culture and context that this work came out of in order to support your vision for a current production.
Some questions to consider:
a. What inspired this play/what was it responding to?
b. What was the historical/political/social climate of the time?
c. How does it fit into the playwright’s career/larger body of work?
d. What was the play asking/proposing at the time?
e. What is unique or significant about the style, structure, dramaturgy of the play?
Start with these background sources to establish factual evidence for a play and its historical period. Depending on the play you are investigating, you will need to look for more specific historical and cultural background and resources.
See "Search Tips" for additional ideas on how how search in Primo, or contact your librarian for help!
Explore over 4,000 plays, 750 hours of video, 450 audio plays, and over 500 scholarly books on criticism and performance practice. Video content on Drama Online comes from the National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare's Globe and more. Playtexts and scholarly books are provided by publishers including Bloomsbury's Arden Shakespeare, Methuen Drama, and Oberon Books, as well as Faber and Faber, Nick Hern Books, TCG Books, and others.
See your group's "Plays" page for individual recommendations for each play.
When searching Primo for books about context, try these search terms:
everyday life, use social life and customs, e.g. England Social life and customs 16th century
first productions and staging, use stage history, e.g., Jonson stage history
history of the period, use country and century, e.g., America 20th century
broad overview of country or city's history, use country and civilization, e.g,. Spain Civilization 1516-1700
works about the theatre, use theater and country, e.g., Theater England History
critical works, use criticism, e.g., Shakespeare AND criticism; Kushner, Tony -- Criticism
views of the author, use author and political and social views or author and religion, e.g., "Sor Juana Ines" AND political AND social views; Marlowe AND religion
Note: When searching by subject, use the ER spelling of theater.
