Introduction
To practice application - applying accent to a text specifically written for that accent or dialect - you'll need to explore the Library's plays collection. This page collects recommendations for browsing plays with accents and dialects and for streaming performances to help you practice!
If you're just looking for excerpts to practice with, check out the monologue collection below.
Great Monologues in Dialect for Young Actors (Ages 17-25) Volume II by
Call Number: MPAL PN2080 .G746 2013The monologues in volume two are taken from the five major dialect regionalisms to be studied: British, Irish, Latinx, African Continent, and American South. While the plays represented in the selections can use the dialects of the regions in question, it is also possible that no dialect is required by the author. The monologue selections are meant to serve as an in-depth study into the literature, environment, culture, and language of a region.
Finding Plays
Looking for a play that features a specific dialect?
- Use Play Index (linked below) and type the dialect you're looking for in the search box, for example, "dialect Cockney" or "dialect Scottish."
- Search our library catalog for the Title of the play to see if we have it in our collection.
- Play Index This link opens in a new windowIndex to more than 30,000 plays written from Antiquity to the present and published from 1949 to the present; includes mysteries, pageants, plays in verse, puppet performances, radio and television plays, and classic drama. All Play master records contain a link to the results of an Internet metasearch of specially selected Web sites to link to full text, criticism, and other useful information. Use Play Index in the NEW EBSCO user interface.
There are also free tools online that allow you to search for plays -- try a keyword search for your accent/dialect and see what comes up!
- Playscripts.comPlayscripts, Inc. is an independent publisher of new plays and musicals, established in 1998. The Playscripts website provides a unique and extensive suite of services for playwrights and customers. Visitors can search for plays that fit their specific needs, read lengthy script samples for free, and buy books and performance rights, online with ease.
Stream Productions
- Audio Drama: The L.A. Theatre Works Collection This link opens in a new windowThis curated archive contains more than three hundred important dramatic works in streaming audio from the nation’s premiere radio theatre company. The plays - which include some of the most significant dramatic literature of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries - are performed by leading actors from around the world and recorded specifically for online listening.
- Broadway HD This link opens in a new windowBroadwayHD collects recordings of theatre and film performances both historical and from the 21st century.
- Digital Theatre Plus This link opens in a new windowDigital Theatre Plus includes recordings of classic, contemporary and international live theatre performances, interviews exploring the dramatic, technical theatre-making process as well as experimental, post-dramatic and applied theatre, and essays, documentaries, lectures, and study guides covering theatre history, context, language analysis, encyclopedia entries, and practical techniques.
- Theatre in Video This link opens in a new windowThis browsable and searchable database contains performances of the world's leading plays and film documentaries on the subject of theater in streaming video. Some plays presented in multiple productions exemplifying various interpretations of the text, and technical and cultural differences among the presentations. Stage work of directors and actors are cross-searchable and available for side-by-side comparison. Interviews with directors, designers, writers, and actors, along with excerpts of live performances, provide illustration of the development of texts and the productions.
- BBC Shakespeare PlaysThe Library has many recordings of Shakespeare plays both on DVD and online! Click to browse what we have available.