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The Theatre Portal

Ancient Greece theatre in Taormina, Sicily, Italy

Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. It is the oldest form of drama, though live theatre has now been joined by modern recorded forms. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. Places, normally buildings, where performances regularly take place are also called "theatres" (or "theaters"), as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, "a place for viewing"), itself from θεάομαι (theáomai, "to see", "to watch", "to observe").

A theatre company is an organisation that produces theatrical performances, as distinct from a theatre troupe (or acting company), which is a group of theatrical performers working together. (Full article...)

Featured article

Theda Bara as Ruth Gordon
The Blue Flame is a four-act play written by George V. Hobart and John Willard, who revised an earlier version by Leta Vance Nicholson. In 1920, producer Albert H. Woods staged the play on Broadway and on tour across the United States. Ruth Gordon, the main character, is a religious young woman who dies and is revived by her scientist fiancé as a soulless femme fatale. She seduces several men and involves them in crimes, including drug use and murder. In the final act, her death and resurrection are revealed to be a dream. The production starred Theda Bara (pictured), a popular silent film actress who was known for playing similar roles in movies. Critics panned the play, ridiculing the plot, the dialog, and Bara's acting. Theater historian Ward Morehouse called it "one of the worst plays ever written". Bara's movie fame drew large crowds to theaters, and the play was a commercial success, breaking attendance records at some venues. Ruth Gordon was Bara's only Broadway role, and The Blue Flame was one of her last professional acting projects.

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Aphra Behn

Featured biography

Tomb of Beckett at Cimetière de Montparnasse
Samuel Barclay Beckett (1906 - 1989) was an Irish writer, dramatist and poet. Beckett's work is stark and fundamentally minimalist. As a student, assistant, and friend of James Joyce, Beckett is considered by many one of the last modernists; as an inspiration to many later writers, he is sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He is also considered one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called "Theatre of the Absurd". He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969 "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". Beckett was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984. He died in Paris of respiratory problems.

Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

  • ... that actress Zita Moulton first starred in theatre performances after a bet with her fiancé that she would be able to get a stage job within 24 hours?
  • ... that the Beacon Theatre, once described as "a true bit of Bagdad on Broadway", later gained a reputation as a rock venue?
  • ... that C. J. Phipps, the leading theatre architect of the age, was found responsible for the deadliest-ever UK theatre disaster?
  • ... that while preparing for War Horse, theatre set designer Rae Smith spent weeks pretending to be a First World War British Army captain?
  • ... that the runway at the Winter Garden Theatre was nicknamed the "bridge of thighs" after lightly clothed showgirls paraded down it?
  • ... that when part of New York City's Hotel Riverview became a theater, some people thought that the hotel's overflowing toilets and leaky ceilings were part of the show there?

Selected quote

Tallulah Bankhead
If you really want to help the American theater, don't be an actress, darling. Be an audience.
Tallulah Bankhead, 1952

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