Performance Arts: Databases

EBSCO's Academic Search Premier is a multi-disciplinary database that provides active full text for more than 3,100 journals, including active full text for nearly 2,750 peer-reviewed titles. The database also includes more than 70,000 videos from the Associated Press. This collection of videos is updated monthly and includes footage from 1930 to the present day. 

Essential for understanding Black history and culture, this online resource allows scholars to discover the migrations, communities, and ideologies of the African Diaspora through the voices of people of African descent.

This collection includes never-before digitised primary source documents, including personal papers, organisational papers, journals, newsletters, court documents, letters, and ephemera. The collection has a number of key partners like The National Archives and Records Administration (US), National Archives at Kew (UK), Royal Anthropological Institute, and Senate House Library (University of London).

A Black Lives Matter learning resource, featuring a collection of articles from the digital archives of over 50 different publications.

An archive of full text scholarly journals focussing on the subject areas of performing arts, architecture, art, education, women's studies, film studies, language and literature, linguistics, and music.

Please note current issues of journals are not included.

To access the online resource, please click on the Log in via your University or Institution link and then select De Montfort University. You will then be prompted to enter your DMU Single Sign On username and password.

The Subculture Archives is an educational and cultural research resource of primary sources exploring 100 years of youth culture through the scenes, styles, and sounds that forged them. From Rave, Punk, Rockabilly to Grime. From the world's leading collection of youth culture history.

The collection incorporates photographs, ephemera, objects and oral histories celebrating our shared youth culture history.

This platform provides online access to over 2,000 full text journals across many different subject areas, including Literature, History, Sociology and Social Policy, Criminology, Mathematics, Environmental Science and Sustainability, Physical Science and Information Science.

With over 125 plays as well as non-fiction books on theatre, the Aurora Metro Books collection offers 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. Playwrights include Germaine Greer, Roy Williams, Benjamin Zephaniah, Meera Syal, Jean-Claude Carriere, Klaus Mann, Ariane Mnouchkine, Timberlake Wertenbaker, April de Angelis, Judith Herzberg, Hella Haasse, Nawal el Sadaawi, Winsome Pinnock, Beverley Naidoo, Dacia Mariani, Gabrielle Preissova, Enid Bagnold, Githa Sowerby, Aphra Behn, and Elisabeth Robins. The plays cover a broad range of topical subjects including the Arab-Israeli conflict, homophobia, political corruption, Muslim identity, global financial crisis, being an immigrant, war in Bosnia, social media, Iran, Yugoslavia, Africa, and refugees

A captivating production that rebalances gender casting, Peake’s Hamlet is a female character who takes on a male mantle, a fierce and textured Hamlet who imbues the role with anger, indignation, and purpose.

In a compelling film, theatre-practitioner Steven Berkoff brings a host of Shakespeare’s most famous characters vividly to life, ideal for students of Shakespeare and performance.

Bloomsbury's Drama Online Core Collection includes over 1,775 playtexts. It provides a range of plays by the world's leading dramatists. The collections provides online content from Methuen Drama, The Arden Shakespeare, and Faber and Faber.

This online collection draws on 10 years of NT Live broadcasts, alongside high-quality archive recordings never previously seen outside of the NT’s Archive, the National Theatre Collection is now complete and contains 30 filmed performances.

The Nick Hern Books Modern Plays collection includes over 625 plays from many of the UK and Ireland’s preeminent playwrights, as well as exciting new voices. It offers a wide and varied range of award-winning and widely studied plays, and is continually updated with new works fresh from leading theatres.

A six-hour masterclass with acclaimed master acting teaching Patsy Rodenburg, the film explores her unique approach to voice and acting and her highly sought-after techniques and exercises in Movement, Speech, Body, and Vocal Warm-up.

This collection includes four high-quality recordings of classic plays from Stage on Screen, filmed in front of a live audience at London’s historic Greenwich Theatre. It also includes cast and crew interviews, images, costume, and set designs

Watch, record, create clips, search for upcoming TV and radio programmes by title or keyword, compile favourite shows into playlists and share them with others. Only available in the UK. Use this guide to find out how to request programmes, edit them into clips, create and share playlists etc.

ProQuest's Film Index International is a major information resource for entertainment films and personalities produced in collaboration with the British Film Institute (BFI). With a scholarly, inclusive approach to all areas of film studies - from the very first silent movies, to art house classics or the latest blockbusters - Film Index International provides truly international coverage, indexing films from over 170 countries.

Kanopy provides access to critically-acclaimed movies, thought-provoking documentaries, award-winning foreign films and lots more.

When off campus, please click on Visit the Montfort Collection and then the Log in to Montfort link. You will then need to enter your DMU Single Sign On account to access the Kanopy site. If you have previously logged in as a DMU registered member then you may not be required to sign in again.

For any titles that are not immediately available to view on the Kanopy site, please complete the Kanopy request form. This will then be reviewed by the relevant subject team to see if a purchase can be approved.

You can watch Kanopy titles on a number of different mobile and TV apps. You can find more information about these different Kanopy apps through the Kanopy support pages.

A comprehensive survey of current publications related to film scholarship alongside detailed and expansive filmographies. This collection includes the specialist index FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals Database and the detailed and complementary filmographies created by the American Film Institute and the British Film Institute; AFI Catalog and Film Index International.

To access UK national and regional newspapers through the Lexis+ platform, click on the Content tab from the Lexis+ homepage and then select Newspapers.

Please note: LexisNexis terms and conditions do not permit the uploading of Lexis content into third party applications, including artificial intelligence technologies such as large language models and generative AI (e.g. ChatGPT, Bing, Google Bard and Harvey).

ProQuest Central brings together complete databases across all major subject areas, including Business, Health and Medical, Language and Literature, Social Sciences, Education, Science and Technology, as well as core titles in the Performing and Visual Arts, History, Religion, Philosophy, and includes thousands of full-text newspapers from around the world. 

Archive online newspapers selected from the British Library's collections, including the Leicester Chronicle, from 1840-1900.