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Find Information on Canadian Drama

The Library collection includes a lot of Canadian drama. Those plays in the regular bookstacks are published plays, and can be signed out. We also have a large collection of Canadian dramatic materials in our theatre archives. This page is designed to help you find the best information for your purposes.

Archival material should not be used if you are looking for a play to use in scene work, acting classes, or directing; archival material is most useful for research papers. Do you want to:

Searching for Canadian Plays in Primo

If you know the playwright's name, or the title of the play, simply search for that in the Primo library catalogue. You will find that a straight author or title search will often retrieve a lot of material from the Archives.

You can also search for "Canadian drama" as a subject heading. This will lead you to collections of Canadian plays, and to critical materials that will provide you with names and titles to search for in Primo. The finding aids will also help you with this.

You can refine your search to eliminate the archival materials. Under the "Guelph/Laurier/Waterloo" drop menu, choose "Guelph McLaughlin Library". See our help page for more information.

Browsing for Canadian Plays in the Library Stacks

Canadian literature is all classed together on the fourth floor of the library:

PS 8000-8860: English Canadian literature
PS 9000-9950: French-Canadian literature

All the works by and about a particular author are shelved together.

If you are not sure of the name of a playwright or the title of a play, you can browse the shelves in these areas, looking for plays.

Archival Material in the Primo Library Catalogue: How to Recognize It

Archival material is, of course, located in the Archives. So watch out for the location "Guelph McLaughlin Archives". Remember that archival materials cannot be removed from the Wellington County Room, which is normally only open from 8:30 to 4:30, Monday to Friday (appointments can be made for other times).

Archival material should not be used if you are looking for a play to use in scene work, acting classes, or directing; archival material is most useful for research papers.

You can often recognize archival material in the list of titles retrieved under a particular author. Many archival records have an addition at the end of the title such as "poster", "review", "set model", "script", etc. These additions are only there for archival materials.

Finding Aids

To identify Canadian playwrights and plays try:

Some Prominent Canadian Playwrights

The links below will take you to a library catalogue search.

Theatre Archives

The University has a large collection of material from some of Canada's best theatres and several collections of papers from prominent playwrights.

These materials include posters, reviews, scripts, set models, and more. They can be extremely valuable when studying the stage history of a play. The papers of a playwright can provide great insight into the writing of a particular work.

Our archival staff have prepared a detailed description of the collections in the L. W. Connolly theatre archives.

Collections of Playwrights' Papers

Note: The material in these collections is intended for research purposes, not for use in acting/directing classes.

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