---
title: Drama & Theater
description: This subject studies plays as both written literature and live performance. Learners will analyze dramatic structure, historical theatrical movements, and staging techniques to understand how scripts are transformed into physical productions and how theater reflects societal values.
category: social-sciences
subcategory: literature
difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced
url: /subject/drama-and-theater
---

# Drama & Theater

This subject studies plays as both written literature and live performance. Learners will analyze dramatic structure, historical theatrical movements, and staging techniques to understand how scripts are transformed into physical productions and how theater reflects societal values.

## Available Resources

3 Books • 3 Websites

## Websites

### 1. r/Theatre

A Reddit forum where working theatre practitioners, students, and technicians discuss auditions, production problems, and career questions. Useful for reading candid accounts of how rehearsal rooms, stage management, and regional companies actually operate.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.reddit.com/r/Theatre/

**Tags:** theatre, community, acting, stagecraft

### 2. Stage Agent

A searchable database of over 2,500 musicals, plays, and operas, each with a plot synopsis, character breakdowns, and suggested monologues or songs. Useful for choosing audition material, casting, or planning a season; some content requires a paid account.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.stageagent.com/

**Tags:** theatre, auditions, musicals, script-analysis, casting

### 3. Playbill

Theatre publication known for its Broadway programs, offering news, reviews, interviews with performers and creators, and listings for Broadway, Off-Broadway and regional productions. Readers can follow what is running, who is making it and how the commercial theatre industry is changing.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://playbill.com

**Tags:** broadway, theatre-news, musical-theatre, theatre-reviews

## Youtubes

### 1. National Theatre

Watch full plays, excerpts, and behind-the-scenes content from the National Theatre on YouTube. Explore the world of drama and theater!

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://youtube.com/@nationaltheatre

**Tags:** theatre, drama, performance, behind-the-scenes

### 2. Royal Shakespeare Company

Explore Shakespeare & theatre! The Royal Shakespeare Company YouTube channel offers insights, performances, and educational content.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://youtube.com/@thersc

**Tags:** shakespeare, theatre, acting, stage-performance

## Books

### 1. The Empty Space

**Author:** Peter Brook

Peter Brook's four essays on Deadly, Holy, Rough, and Immediate theatre, drawn from his directing work. Readers come away with a vocabulary for judging why a staged scene feels alive or inert.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0140135839?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, literature

### 2. Poetics

**Author:** Aristotle

Aristotle's surviving treatise on tragedy and epic, analyzing plot, character, and catharsis. After reading it you can identify the structural terms, such as reversal and recognition, that still underpin how critics discuss dramatic form.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/048629577X?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, literature

### 3. A Director Prepares

**Author:** Anne Bogart

Seven essays by a working stage director on violence, memory, terror, eroticism, stereotype, embarrassment, and resistance as forces in rehearsal. Gives directors and actors concrete ways to use difficulty rather than avoid it when making theatre.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0415238323?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, literature

---

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