Since what you need is mostly literature, looking in the library catalog is a good place to start. You can search by author--eg. Stevens, Wallace, or Carver, Raymond. You can also do keyword searching for literary styles, movements, or themes--eg. "nature poetry", "stories about women", "Greek plays". Also look for anthologies or collections of fiction, poems, plays--there are lots of annual "Best of" collections for short fiction and poems and we should have many of them. Also look for "big name" anthologies like Norton.
While you won't find many texts in the following database, you might find these useful for interpretive information to fund your performance choices.
There's a surprising amount of legit literature available on the Internet. Older, out-of-copyright things--poems, plays, some narrative fiction, might be available on archival sites--try Project Gutenberg or The MIT Classics Archive. Or here's an example--a web-based version of Madame Bovary on The Literature Network's website. Some judicious use of Google Books might be of use also.
The Poetry Foundation website (link in the list) is a great place to browse poems--they have every poem ever published in Poetry Magazine as well as author information and some reviews and other analytical material.
