Theatre Alberta’s Library Indexes represent listings of play titles available in our library.
Are you looking for a play requiring a specific number of male and female actors? Here’s How to Search the Indexes by Casting Breakdown.
*These indexes were made prior to the change to our new library program in 2019, so the indexes are not up to date. As KOHA (our new library catalog program) is easier to search, we will not be updating these indexes.
PLEASE NOTE: A Collection Item is a script available in a collection only. You cannot reserve a collection item. You can; however, reserve the collection the script is in. In these indexes, you will find the title of the collection in the Subtitle of the Collection Item.
Searching the Library Indexes
To search the Indexes for the casting breakdown of plays, you need to know two things: How to bring up the Search feature in you web browser and the search terms we use when cataloguing our plays. Here’s how it works:
To bring up the Search feature in your web browser:
The procedure varies slightly depending on your computer:
PC instructions:
1. Open the index you’d like to search
2. Press Ctrl + F (the Control key and the F key at the same time) to open a search window in the upper left hand corner of your browser
MAC instructions:
1. Open the index you’d like to search
2. Press Command + F (the Command key and the F key at the same time) to open a Find window in the upper right hand corner of your browser
The search terms to enter:
Casting breakdown is entered into the description field in a specific way and a successful search is dependent on recreating the exact phrasing and grammar. Here’s the key:
[number of male actors] male; [number of female actors] female
For example: three male; two female or two male; six female
Make sure you’re spelling out the number of actors instead of entering the numeral.
Exceptions:
All male or female cast: Search all male cast; [number] characters or all female cast; [number] characters. For example: all male cast; three characters or all female cast; two characters. The search results will include plays that require doubling.
Large cast: Searches may or may not be successful as large casts are sometimes entered as simply large cast.
Other searches:
Now that you know how to do casting breakdown searches, try using the search feature for subjects or a playwright’s name or anything else you can think of that we may have entered into the description of a play.
Happy Searching!
