Try finding recent theses on your research topic and make use of the full text access to the bibliographies.
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global
World's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses. Includes over 2.1 million dissertation and theses citations from around the world from 1861 to the present day together with over a million full-text dissertations that are available for download in PDF format. The database offers full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and strong retrospective full text coverage for older graduate works.
Over 70,000 new full text dissertations and theses are added each year. Each dissertation published since July 1980 includes a 350-word abstract written by the author. Master's theses published since 1988 include 150-word abstracts. Bibliographic citations are available for dissertations dating from 1637. Where available, provides 24-page previews of dissertations and theses. For UBC users, offers researchers unlimited access to digital copies from UBC theses & dissertations.
Compare the results of searching pioneer players and "pioneer players". Download the PDF of a thesis, and do a keyword search within the thesis. If the thesis was scanned, keyword searching won't always work. For example, try the same search for "billy bishop goes to war" and download the PDF of the 20th thesis (Theatre into television: Theory and practice in English Canadian drama, 1952 to 1987) and try doing a keyword search for billy bishop goes to war.
For most subject searching in this database, I recommend using broad subject terms and restricting your search to the Anywhere except full text. For example, compare the results of searching canad* AND theatre OR theater in Anywhere and in Anywhere except full text.
You can also mine the bibliographies: try searching "Kirsty Johnston" OR "Johnston, Kirsty" (search Anywhere).
Try setting up a search alert for notification about completed theses on your topic.
Use this guide for more information about finding theses and dissertations written at UBC and beyond.
Theatre journal (Washington D.C.)
The annual listing of Doctoral Projects In Progress in Theatre Arts in the U.S.is published in the May/June issue of Theatre Journal.
UBC graduate theses and dissertations are available online in cIRcle, UBC's Information Repository.
Browse UBC cIRcle by Program (theses) for Theatre.