New Play Exchange - TH141 - Acting One - LibGuides at Millikin University

Finding Plays and Monologues using the New Play Exchange Database

New Play Exchange This link opens in a new window
The New Play Exchange, a National New Play Network project, is the world’s largest digital library of scripts by living writers. Designed and built with the needs of the entire new play sector in mind, the New Play Exchange serves writers, producers, directors, artistic directors, literary managers, dramaturgs, publishers, agents, actors, professors, students, and even fans of the theater.

Accessing the Database

1. Start out at the library’s homepage, http://www.millikin.edu/staley

2. Click on the link for “Find Articles, Audio, Video, and Images” under the Research section of the homepage.

or click on the “Staley Library Databases” link in My.Millikin.edu

3. That will take you to the database page. Under “Databases by Subject” click on Theatre.

4. The New Play Exchange Collections will be listed in the "Play/Script Resources" list, click on it.

Here’s the main page of the database:

The main page includes featured and new content.

Advanced Searching in New Play Exchange

1. Click on "Search- Plays"

2. On the search menu, you have lots of options to narrow down your results to what you want.

"Find a Character" lets you select a character race/ethnicity and/or gender:

"Actors" lets you limit your search by cast size, actor age, gender, and/or race/ethnicity:

"Genre" lets you limit by genre of play:

"Length" and "Age Appropriateness" lets you limit by other play attributes.

"Narrative Attributes" let you limit to plays that center certain types of characters.

"Script Availability" will limit to results that have the full text of the script available (not all scripts in NPX are full text).