(Re)Search: Free Resources for Dramaturgy Research

HowlRound: It seems that more often than not I am assigned to a play that I know nothing about. For example, last spring I worked on a production of Patricia Burke Brogan’s Eclipsed. The play is about a group of young women who work in a penitential home doing a grueling amount of laundry day in and day out. I remember finishing my first reading of the play and thinking “Why don’t I know anything about Magdalene laundries in Ireland in the 1960s?” My initial response was to overcompensate and try to learn everything about the women and the time period. Does that sound a little unrealistic? Well it should!