Theatre Library Association

The Theatre Library Association is proud to announce the TLA Book Award winners for English language works of scholarship on live and recorded performance published in 2024. The Theatre Library Association is delighted to invite you to the annual presentation of these TLA Book Awards. The virtual TLA Book Awards Ceremony will include remarks from this year’s winning authors, presentations of the …

The Theatre Library Association is proud to announce the TLA Book Award winners for English language works of scholarship on live and recorded performance published in 2023. The Theatre Library Association is delighted to invite you to the annual presentation of these TLA Book Awards. The virtual TLA Book Awards Ceremony will include remarks from this year’s winning authors, presentations of the …

The Theatre Library Association is proud to announce the TLA Book Award winners for outstanding English language works of scholarship on live and recorded performance published in 2021. The Theatre Library Association is delighted to invite you to the annual presentation of these TLA Book Awards. The virtual TLA Book Awards Ceremony will include remarks from this year’s winning authors and jurors…

ASTR/TLA 2017 Conference Extra/Ordinary Bodies: Interrogating the Performance and Aesthetics of “Difference” Grand Hyatt Atlanta in Buckhead Atlanta, Georgia November 16-19, 2017 Past Symposia TLA Symposium I Performance Documentation and Preservation in an Online Environment The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts New York, New York October 10, 2003 TLA Symposium II Performance Recla…

Click here for nomination information: Louis Rachow Award for Distinguished Service in Performing Arts Librarianship 2025 (Nominate by August 29th, 2025!) Click here for application information: Brooks McNamara Performing Arts Librarian Scholarship 2024 (Applications will re-open in 2026.) Theatre Library Association celebrates the excellence of our profession by bestowing the Louis Rachow Distin…

The Theatre Library Association is proud to announce the TLA Book Award winners for outstanding English language works of scholarship on live and recorded performance published in 2020. The Theatre Library Association is delighted to invite you to the annual presentation of these TLA Book Awards. The virtual TLA Book Awards Ceremony will include remarks from this year’s winning authors and jurors…

Theatre Library Association’s monograph series, Performing Arts Resources (ISSN: 0360-3814) features articles on resource materials in the fields of theatre, popular entertainment, film, television and radio, information on public and private collections, and essays on conservation and collection management of theatre arts materials. PAR also publishes rare historical documents and out-of-print w…

For questions regarding placing playbill collections with special collections libraries, please see our Collecting Playbills page. New England Mid-Atlantic Southeast Midwest Southwest West Coast International Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays, Brown University Harvard Theatre Collection The Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library,…

Black Lives Matter, and we have to say the names of those who were senselessly killed by police brutality and anti-blackness: George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Botham Jean, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, and an almost endless list of others. Our heart goes out to the families, […]

The Theatre Library Association is delighted to invite you to the annual presentation of the TLA Book Awards, honoring English language works of scholarship on theatre, film, and broadcasting, published in 2018. The TLA Book Awards Ceremony will include remarks from some of this year’s winners, a pop-up exhibition of related special collections materials from th…

A Life-Coaching Approach to Screen Acting Daniel Dresner London: Methuen Drama, 2018 ISBN-13: 978-1350039438 Daniel Dresner sets out to offer the student of film acting valuable support both as a fledgling artist and as a person in his book A Life-Coaching Approach to Screen Acting. I can report that he succeeds. A Life-Coaching Approach to […]

100 Greatest American Plays Thomas S. Hischak Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017 ISBN-13: 978-1442256057 Over time, theatregoers and practitioners develop their own mental list of favorite plays, though they may never bother to commit their list to paper.  We are, of course, each entitled to our own criteria for the selections we make of […]

Chagall: Fantasies for the Stage at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art “I adore the theater and I am a painter. I think the two are made for a marriage of love.” Marc Chagall Chagall’s works for theatrical productions are underexamined despite the importance that theater had in his works. The current special exhibition […]

The Sixties, Center Stage: Mainstream and Popular Performances in a Turbulent Decade. Edited by James M. Harding and Cindy Rosenthal. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2017. ISBN 978-0472053360.   For those of a certain age, or even younger, “The Sixties,” writ large, is an era of extraordinary cultural change, indelible in its historic […]

By Women Possessed: A Life of Eugene O’Neill Barbara and Arthur Gelb New York: Marian Wood Books/Putnam, 2016 ISBN 978-0399159114 Eugene O’Neill’s towering predominance among American dramatists is, quite simply, undeniable.  Winner of a Nobel Prize, a record four Pulitzer Prizes, his fifty-plus plays written beginning in the late 1910s established a standard for Broadway […]

Experiencing Stanislavsky Today Stephanie Daventry French and Philip G. Bennet. London: Routledge, 2016 ISBN 978-0415693950   In Experiencing Stanislavsky Today, authors Stephanie Daventry French and Philip G. Bennett introduce new performers to the tenets and practices of Konstantin Stanislavsky’s highly influential System of acting.  The authors have coupled an expert understanding of Stanislav…

Some Enchanted Evenings: The Glittering Life and Times of Mary Martin David Kaufman New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2016 ISBN 978-1250031754 420 pp.   David Kaufman brings readers a lively new journey through the career and personal life of an iconic star who enchanted audiences for decades both on stage and via the small […]

Then and Now: a Memoir Barbara Cook with Tom Santopietro New York, NY: Harper, 2016 ISBN 978-0062090461 256 p.   The word “legend” is applied with casual abandon these days.  A recent New York Times ad hailed Idina Menzel as a “legend” with all of two Broadway shows under her belt.  Taking nothing away from […]

The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built. Jack Viertel New York, NY: Sarah Crichton Books, 2016 ISBN 978-0374256920 336 p. Even long-time Shubert Alley denizens will be entertained and enlightened by veteran producer/dramaturge Viertel’s keen yet charming explication and analysis of the inner workings of a typical Broadway musical. The […]

Part of the appeal of the performing arts is its quintessential ephemerality:  performances exist in a particular time and place, in conjunction with a specific group of spectators.  The audience is a fundamental element of the performance itself – ask any performer how they play off audience members.  A colleague in Arizona named her company […]