Plays from Other European Countries - IB Theatre - Director's Notebook (last assessment 2023)

Plays by European Playwrights

Find Drama for Students articles and WSA Library books with plays written by the playwrights listed below, from these countries:

Austria	Czech Rep.	Germany
Italy	Netherlands	Norway
Spain	Sweden	Switzerland

Also see:

Digital Theatre Plus - films of leading theatre productions
Drama Online - films of National Theatre productions

Writers with plays in the WSA library are marked with:

Bertolt Brecht ( 1898 - 1956 )
Antonio Buero Vallejo ( 1916 - 2000 )
Pedro Calderón de la Barca ( 1600 - 1681 )
Josef Čapek (1887 - 1948 ) Czech Republic
Karel Čapek ( 1890 - 1938 )
Jan de Hartog ( 1914 - 2002 ) Norway
Dario Fo ( 1926 - ) Italy
Max Frisch ( 1911 - 1991 ) Switzerland
Natalia Ginzburg ( 1916 - 1991 ) Italy
Carlo Goldoni ( 1707 - 1793 ) Italy
Václav Havel  ( 1936 - 2011 ) Czech Republic
Hugo von Hofmannsthal ( 1874 - 1929 ) Austria
Henrik Ibsen ( 1828 - 1906 ) Norway
Federico García Lorca ( 1898 - 1936 )
Luigi Pirandello ( 1867 - 1936 ) Italy
August Strindberg ( 1849 - 1912 ) Sweden
Peter Weiss ( 1916 - 1982 ) Sweden

Digital Theatre Plus

Digital Theatre Plus This link opens in a new window
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- Why search here?
  Digital Theatre Plus gives you access to films of leading theatre productions – drama, comedies, and musicals.
- What's included?
  Filmed theatre productions and symphony orchestra, opera, and ballet performances, along with interviews of directors, actors, and other creative team members and detailed analysis of play texts.
- How do I cite it?
  This database doesn't supply citations. In NoodleTools, choose Database, then determine what you are looking at and do your best when filling out the form. Examples” Reference Source; Film or Video Recording.

Drama Online

Drama Online This link opens in a new window
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- Why search here?
  Drama Online gives you access to play texts and a selection of filmed performances of the Royal National Theatre in London.
- What's included?
  It contains the Core and Critical Studies Collection (with full text of over 1,700 plays and over 400 related academic ebooks from Methuen Drama and Arden Shakespeare) and the National Theatre Collection of filmed performances.
- How do I cite it?
  This database doesn't supply citations. In NoodleTools, choose Database, then determine what you are looking at and do your best when filling out the form. A play text would be cited like a Book. Other examples: Reference Source; Film or Video Recording.

Bertolt Brecht

Antonio Buero Vallejo

The Sleep of Reason, by Antonio Buero Vallejo, 1970

Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Life Is a Dream, by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, 1635

Josef Čapek

The Insect Play, by Josef Čapek and Karel Čapek, 1921

Karel Čapek

R. U. R. by Karel Capek; Paul Selver (Translator); Nigel Playfair (Translator)
Call Number: 891.86 Cap
ISBN: 0486419266
Publication Date: 2001-08-20
After being mass-produced to serve humans as laborers, artificial humans find their creators losing interest in life and no longer reproducing, prompting them to kill all humans until there is only one left and leaving the android population to figure out self-duplication on its own.

Jan de Hartog

The Fourposter, by Jan de Hartog, 1951

Dario Fo

Accidental Death of an Anarchist, by Dario Fo, 1970

Max Frisch

The Firebugs, by Max Frisch, 1958

Natalia Ginzburg

The Advertisement, by Natalia Ginzburg, 1968

Carlo Goldoni

The Servant of Two Masters, by Carlo Goldoni, c. 1745

Václav Havel

Plays in One Act by Daniel Halpern
Call Number: 808.82 Pla
ISBN: 9780880014908
Publication Date: 2005-12-27
Collection of forty-three modern one act plays and monologues from a variety of American writers.

Includes 'Protest' by Václav Havel: Ferdinand Vanek, the eternal dissident, is approached by a friend whose future son-in-law, a song writer/singer and member of an opposition party, has been arrested. Vanek is asked to formulate a protest resolution, collect signatures and activate interest abroad so that his friend can save his pregnant daughter's intended spouse without endangering his comfortable middle class existence.

Theatre Alive! by Norman A. Bert (Editor, Introduction by); Arthur L. Zapel (Editor); Rhonda Wray (Editor)
Call Number: 808.82 The
ISBN: 1566080088
Publication Date: 1994-10-01
An anthology of world drama from many cultures with sixteen famous plays by leading international playwrights.

Includes 'Largo Desolato' by Václav Havel: A vivid and terrifying portrait of the writer in a totalitarian state. Professor Leopold Nettles is the author of a book that contains a troublesome paragraph. Accused of disturbing the intellectual peace, he is pressed by the government to deny what he has written. Internal demons join the external ones torturing the professor.

The Memorandum, by Václav Havel, 1965

Hugo von Hofmannsthal

Henrik Ibsen

Ghosts and Other Plays by Henrik Ibsen; Peter Watts (Introduction by, Translator)
Call Number: 839.82 Ibs
ISBN: 0140441352
Publication Date: 1964-06-30
The plays in this volume focus on the family and how it struggles to stay together by telling lies - and exposing them. In "Ghosts", Osvald Alving returns home only to discover the truth about the father he always looked up to, and learns the horrific effect his father's debauchery has had on him. It was Ibsen's most provocative drama, stripping away the surface of a middle-class family to expose layers of hypocrisy and immorality. "A Public Enemy" sets two brothers against each other when one wishes to make public the facts about the polluted water in the public baths of their home town. And "When We Dead Wake" tells of an artist meeting an old lover by chance and rejecting his wife, in a symbolic exploration of Ibsen's own literary life and the sacrifices he made in his work.
The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen; David Eldridge (Translator)
Call Number: 839.82 Ibs
ISBN: 9780413775757
Publication Date: 2005-12-08
Should the truth be pursued whatever the cost? The idealistic son of a wealthy businessman seeks to expose his father's duplicity and to free his childhood friend from the lies on which his happy home life is based. When skeletons are brought out of the closet, the foundations of the Ekdal family are torn apart - with drastic consequences.
Theatre Alive! by Norman A. Bert (Editor, Introduction by); Arthur L. Zapel (Editor); Rhonda Wray (Editor)
Call Number: 808.82 The
ISBN: 1566080088
Publication Date: 1994-10-01
An anthology of world drama from many cultures with sixteen famous plays by leading international playwrights.

Includes 'A Doll's House' by Henrik Ibsen: A drama of marriage and the individual that portrays a controlling husband Torvald Helmer and his wife Nora, a submissive young woman who, when their idealized homelife collapses, comes to the realization that she must finally close the door on her husband, children, and life in "a doll's house" in order to find and live as her true self.

IB Theatre - Director's Notebook (last assessment 2023): Plays from Other European Countries