The Libraries have begun to deliver streaming video online in two major data resources: Theater in Video and Dance in Video.
Released in 2007 by Alexander Street Press, Theatre in Video contains 250 memorable stage productions of the world’s most important plays, as well as 100 documentaries, all comprising more than 500 hours of material available online on streaming video. The collection features performances by leading actors and directors such as Orson Welles as King Lear, Lee J. Cobb as the legendary star of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Lee Grant and Marsha Mason in Neil Simon’s The Good Doctor, and 30 plays from the BBC’s Shakespeare Series.
Theater in Video includes productions from the 1930s, continuing through the rest of the 20th century. Other notable playwrights include Jean Cocteau, August Strindberg, Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekov, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter, George Bernard Shaw, Neil Simon, Wendy Wasserstein, and Tennessee Williams. Among the actors featured are Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, John Gielgud, Derek Jacobi, Helen Mirren, and Anthony Hopkins. Theatre companies represented include Bertolt Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble, Jerzy Grotowski’s Polish Laboratory Theatre, and the New York Shakespeare Festival.
Theater in Video contains multiple performances of some plays, enabling comparative analysis of different interpretations. The online interface includes searching by genre, artist, time period, place, and other fields. Users can bookmark specific scenes, monologues, and stagings, which they can then link to work environments such as course reserves and bibliographies within articles.
Alexander Street Press’s latest product is Dance in Video, which promises to be an equally rich collection. When completed it will contain 250 dance productions and documentaries by influential artists of the 20th century. Dance genres represented include ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, experimental, and improvisational dance. Target content includes UCI Professor Donald McKayle’s seminal Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder, Merce Cunningham’s Points in Space, and hundreds more. Among the choreographers and companies whose work will appear are Agnes de Mille, Mark Morris, Lester Horton, Anna Sokolow, Anthony Tudor, José Limón, Alvin Ailey, The Kirov Ballet, the Bolshoi Ballet, and the National Ballet of Canada.
For more information please contact Jim Galbraith, Head of Collection Development (jgalbrai@uci.edu or x41279).
Message from the University Librarian: Library Fellowships for Undergraduate Research
Explore "Next Generation Melvyl"
Debut of Theatre and Dance Videos Online
Spring Exhibit: Robert Cohen Takes the Stage
Physician Explores Librarianship
UCI Libraries Assist with NIH Open Access Policy
Contributors:
Jackie Dooley, Jim Galbraith, Carol Hughes, Susan Lessick, Gerald Munoff, Cathy Palmer, Brian Williams
Editor: Jackie Dooley
Design & Production:
Sylvia Irving
Web Version:
Sage Kim