What does the word theatre come from what does theatre include

Theatre or theater^[a] 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. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience.^[1] The specific place of the performance is also named by the word «theatre» as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, «a place for viewing»), itself from θεάομαι (theáomai, «to see», «to watch», «to observe»).

Modern Western theatre comes, in large measure, from the theatre of ancient Greece, from which it borrows technical terminology, classification into genres, and many of its themes, stock characters, and plot elements. Theatre artist Patrice Pavis defines theatricality, theatrical language, stage writing and the specificity of theatre as synonymous expressions that differentiate theatre from the other performing arts, literature and the arts in general.^[2][b]

A theatre company is an organisation that produces theatrical performances,^[3] as distinct from a theatre troupe (or acting company), which is a group of theatrical performers working together.^[4][5]

Modern theatre includes performances of plays and musical theatre. The art forms of ballet and opera are also theatre and use many conventions such as acting, costumes and staging. They were influential to the development of musical theatre.

History of theatre[edit]

Classical and Hellenistic Greece[edit]

The city-state of Athens is where Western theatre originated.^[6][7][8][c] It was part of a broader culture of theatricality and performance in classical Greece that included festivals, religious rituals, politics, law, athletics and gymnastics, music, poetry, weddings, funerals, and symposia.^{[9][8][10][11][d]}

Participation in the city-state’s many festivals—and mandatory attendance at the City Dionysia as an audience member (or even as a participant in the theatrical productions) in particular—was an important part of citizenship.^[13] Civic participation also involved the evaluation of the rhetoric of orators evidenced in performances in the law-court or political assembly, both of which were understood as analogous to the theatre and increasingly came to absorb its dramatic vocabulary.^[14][15] The Greeks also developed the concepts of dramatic criticism and theatre architecture.^[16][17][18] Actors were either amateur or at best semi-professional.^[19] The theatre of ancient Greece consisted of three types of drama: tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play.^[20]

The origins of theatre in ancient Greece, according to Aristotle (384–322 BCE), the first theoretician of theatre, are to be found in the festivals that honored Dionysus. The performances were given in semi-circular auditoria cut into hillsides, capable of seating 10,000–20,000 people. The stage consisted of a dancing floor (orchestra), dressing room and scene-building area (skene). Since the words were the most important part, good acoustics and clear delivery were paramount. The actors (always men) wore masks appropriate to the characters they represented, and each might play several parts.^[21]

Athenian tragedy—the oldest surviving form of tragedy—is a type of dance-drama that formed an important part of the theatrical culture of the city-state.^{[6][7][8][22][23][e]} Having emerged sometime during the 6th century BCE, it flowered during the 5th century BCE (from the end of which it began to spread throughout the Greek world), and continued to be popular until the beginning of the Hellenistic period.^{[25][26][7][f]}

No tragedies from the 6th century BCE and only 32 of the more than a thousand that were performed in during the 5th century BCE have survived.^[28][29][g] We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.^[30][h] The origins of tragedy remain obscure, though by the 5th century BCE it was institutionalised in competitions (agon) held as part of festivities celebrating Dionysus (the god of wine and fertility).^[31][32] As contestants in the City Dionysia’s competition (the most prestigious of the festivals to stage drama) playwrights were required to present a tetralogy of plays (though the individual works were not necessarily connected by story or theme), which usually consisted of three tragedies and one satyr play.^[33][34][i] The performance of tragedies at the City Dionysia may have begun as early as 534 BCE; official records (didaskaliai) begin from 501 BCE, when the satyr play was introduced.^[35][33][j]

Most Athenian tragedies dramatise events from Greek mythology, though The Persians—which stages the Persian response to news of their military defeat at the Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE—is the notable exception in the surviving drama.^[33][k] When Aeschylus won first prize for it at the City Dionysia in 472 BCE, he had been writing tragedies for more than 25 years, yet its tragic treatment of recent history is the earliest example of drama to survive.^[33][37] More than 130 years later, the philosopher Aristotle analysed 5th-century Athenian tragedy in the oldest surviving work of dramatic theory—his Poetics (c. 335 BCE).

Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods, «Old Comedy», «Middle Comedy», and «New Comedy». Old Comedy survives today largely in the form of the eleven surviving plays of Aristophanes, while Middle Comedy is largely lost (preserved only in relatively short fragments in authors such as Athenaeus of Naucratis). New Comedy is known primarily from the substantial papyrus fragments of Menander. Aristotle defined comedy as a representation of laughable people that involves some kind of blunder or ugliness that does not cause pain or disaster.^[l]

In addition to the categories of comedy and tragedy at the City Dionysia, the festival also included the Satyr Play. Finding its origins in rural, agricultural rituals dedicated to Dionysus, the satyr play eventually found its way to Athens in its most well-known form. Satyr’s themselves were tied to the god Dionysus as his loyal woodland companions, often engaging in drunken revelry and mischief at his side. The satyr play itself was classified as tragicomedy, erring on the side of the more modern burlesque traditions of the early twentieth century. The plotlines of the plays were typically concerned with the dealings of the pantheon of Gods and their involvement in human affairs, backed by the chorus of Satyrs. However, according to Webster, satyr actors did not always perform typical satyr actions and would break from the acting traditions assigned to the character type of a mythical forest creature.^[38]

Roman theatre[edit]

Western theatre developed and expanded considerably under the Romans. The Roman historian Livy wrote that the Romans first experienced theatre in the 4th century BCE, with a performance by Etruscan actors.^[39] Beacham argues that they had been familiar with «pre-theatrical practices» for some time before that recorded contact.^[40] The theatre of ancient Rome was a thriving and diverse art form, ranging from festival performances of street theatre, nude dancing, and acrobatics, to the staging of Plautus’s broadly appealing situation comedies, to the high-style, verbally elaborate tragedies of Seneca. Although Rome had a native tradition of performance, the Hellenization of Roman culture in the 3rd century BCE had a profound and energizing effect on Roman theatre and encouraged the development of Latin literature of the highest quality for the stage. The only surviving plays from the Roman Empire are ten dramas attributed to Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE), the Corduba-born Stoic philosopher and tutor of Nero.^[41]

Indian theatre[edit]

The first form of Indian theatre was the Sanskrit theatre,^[42] earliest-surviving fragments of which date from the 1st century CE.^[43][44] It began after the development of Greek and Roman theatre and before the development of theatre in other parts of Asia.^[42] It emerged sometime between the 2nd century BCE and the 1st century CE and flourished between the 1st century CE and the 10th, which was a period of relative peace in the history of India during which hundreds of plays were written.^[45][46] The wealth of archeological evidence from earlier periods offers no indication of the existence of a tradition of theatre.^[46] The ancient Vedas (hymns from between 1500 and 1000 BCE that are among the earliest examples of literature in the world) contain no hint of it (although a small number are composed in a form of dialogue) and the rituals of the Vedic period do not appear to have developed into theatre.^[46] The Mahābhāṣya by Patañjali contains the earliest reference to what may have been the seeds of Sanskrit drama.^[47] This treatise on grammar from 140 BCE provides a feasible date for the beginnings of theatre in India.^[47]

The major source of evidence for Sanskrit theatre is A Treatise on Theatre (Nātyaśāstra), a compendium whose date of composition is uncertain (estimates range from 200 BCE to 200 CE) and whose authorship is attributed to Bharata Muni. The Treatise is the most complete work of dramaturgy in the ancient world. It addresses acting, dance, music, dramatic construction, architecture, costuming, make-up, props, the organisation of companies, the audience, competitions, and offers a mythological account of the origin of theatre.^[47] In doing so, it provides indications about the nature of actual theatrical practices. Sanskrit theatre was performed on sacred ground by priests who had been trained in the necessary skills (dance, music, and recitation) in a [hereditary process]. Its aim was both to educate and to entertain.

Under the patronage of royal courts, performers belonged to professional companies that were directed by a stage manager (sutradhara), who may also have acted.^[43][47] This task was thought of as being analogous to that of a puppeteer—the literal meaning of «sutradhara» is «holder of the strings or threads».^[47] The performers were trained rigorously in vocal and physical technique.^[48] There were no prohibitions against female performers; companies were all-male, all-female, and of mixed gender. Certain sentiments were considered inappropriate for men to enact, however, and were thought better suited to women. Some performers played characters their own age, while others played ages different from their own (whether younger or older). Of all the elements of theatre, the Treatise gives most attention to acting (abhinaya), which consists of two styles: realistic (lokadharmi) and conventional (natyadharmi), though the major focus is on the latter.^[48][m]

Its drama is regarded as the highest achievement of Sanskrit literature.^[43] It utilised stock characters, such as the hero (nayaka), heroine (nayika), or clown (vidusaka). Actors may have specialized in a particular type. Kālidāsa in the 1st century BCE, is arguably considered to be ancient India’s greatest Sanskrit dramatist. Three famous romantic plays written by Kālidāsa are the Mālavikāgnimitram (Mālavikā and Agnimitra), Vikramuurvashiiya (Pertaining to Vikrama and Urvashi), and Abhijñānaśākuntala (The Recognition of Shakuntala). The last was inspired by a story in the Mahabharata and is the most famous. It was the first to be translated into English and German. Śakuntalā (in English translation) influenced Goethe’s Faust (1808–1832).^[43]

The next great Indian dramatist was Bhavabhuti (c. 7th century CE). He is said to have written the following three plays: Malati-Madhava, Mahaviracharita and Uttar Ramacharita. Among these three, the last two cover between them the entire epic of Ramayana. The powerful Indian emperor Harsha (606–648) is credited with having written three plays: the comedy Ratnavali, Priyadarsika, and the Buddhist drama Nagananda.

East Asian theatre[edit]

The Tang dynasty is sometimes known as «The Age of 1000 Entertainments». During this era, Ming Huang formed an acting school known as The Pear Garden to produce a form of drama that was primarily musical. That is why actors are commonly called «Children of the Pear Garden.» During the dynasty of Empress Ling, shadow puppetry first emerged as a recognized form of theatre in China. There were two distinct forms of shadow puppetry, Pekingese (northern) and Cantonese (southern). The two styles were differentiated by the method of making the puppets and the positioning of the rods on the puppets, as opposed to the type of play performed by the puppets. Both styles generally performed plays depicting great adventure and fantasy, rarely was this very stylized form of theatre used for political propaganda.

Japanese forms of Kabuki, Nō, and Kyōgen developed in the 17th century CE.^[49]

Cantonese shadow puppets were the larger of the two. They were built using thick leather which created more substantial shadows. Symbolic color was also very prevalent; a black face represented honesty, a red one bravery. The rods used to control Cantonese puppets were attached perpendicular to the puppets’ heads. Thus, they were not seen by the audience when the shadow was created. Pekingese puppets were more delicate and smaller. They were created out of thin, translucent leather (usually taken from the belly of a donkey). They were painted with vibrant paints, thus they cast a very colorful shadow. The thin rods which controlled their movements were attached to a leather collar at the neck of the puppet. The rods ran parallel to the bodies of the puppet and then turned at a ninety degree angle to connect to the neck. While these rods were visible when the shadow was cast, they laid outside the shadow of the puppet; thus they did not interfere with the appearance of the figure. The rods are attached at the necks to facilitate the use of multiple heads with one body. When the heads were not being used, they were stored in a muslin book or fabric-lined box. The heads were always removed at night. This was in keeping with the old superstition that if left intact, the puppets would come to life at night. Some puppeteers went so far as to store the heads in one book and the bodies in another, to further reduce the possibility of reanimating puppets. Shadow puppetry is said to have reached its highest point of artistic development in the eleventh century before becoming a tool of the government.

In the Song dynasty, there were many popular plays involving acrobatics and music. These developed in the Yuan dynasty into a more sophisticated form known as zaju, with a four- or five-act structure. Yuan drama spread across China and diversified into numerous regional forms, one of the best known of which is Peking Opera which is still popular today.

Xiangsheng is a certain traditional Chinese comedic performance in the forms of monologue or dialogue.

Indonesian theatre[edit]

In Indonesia, theatre performances have become an important part of local culture, theatre performances in Indonesia have been developed for thousands of years. Most of Indonesia’s oldest theatre forms are linked directly to local literary traditions (oral and written). The prominent puppet theatres — wayang golek (wooden rod-puppet play) of the Sundanese and wayang kulit (leather shadow-puppet play) of the Javanese and Balinese—draw much of their repertoire from indigenized versions of the Ramayana and Mahabharata. These tales also provide source material for the wayang wong (human theatre) of Java and Bali, which uses actors. Some wayang golek performances, however, also present Muslim stories, called menak.^[50][51] Wayang is an ancient form of storytelling that renowned for its elaborate puppet/human and complex musical styles.^[52] The earliest evidence is from the late 1st millennium CE, in medieval-era texts and archeological sites.^[53] The oldest known record that concerns wayang is from the 9th century. Around 840 AD an Old Javanese (Kawi) inscriptions called Jaha Inscriptions issued by Maharaja Sri Lokapala from Mataram Kingdom in Central Java mentions three sorts of performers: atapukan, aringgit, and abanol. Aringgit means Wayang puppet show, Atapukan means Mask dance show, and abanwal means joke art. Ringgit is described in an 11th-century Javanese poem as a leather shadow figure.

Medieval Islamic traditions[edit]

Theatre in the medieval Islamic world included puppet theatre (which included hand puppets, shadow plays and marionette productions) and live passion plays known as ta’ziya, where actors re-enact episodes from Muslim history. In particular, Shia Islamic plays revolved around the shaheed (martyrdom) of Ali’s sons Hasan ibn Ali and Husayn ibn Ali. Secular plays were known as akhraja, recorded in medieval adab literature, though they were less common than puppetry and ta’ziya theatre.^[54]

Early modern and modern theatre in the West[edit]

Theatre took on many alternative forms in the West between the 15th and 19th centuries, including commedia dell’arte from Italian theatre, and melodrama. The general trend was away from the poetic drama of the Greeks and the Renaissance and toward a more naturalistic prose style of dialogue, especially following the Industrial Revolution.^[55]

Theatre took a big pause during 1642 and 1660 in England because of the Puritan Interregnum.^[56] The rising anti-theatrical sentiment among Puritans saw William Prynne write Histriomastix (1633), the most notorious attack on theatre prior to the ban.^[56] Viewing theatre as sinful, the Puritans ordered the closure of London theatres in 1642.^[57] On 24 January 1643, the actors protested against the ban by writing a pamphlet titled The Actors remonstrance or complaint for the silencing of their profession, and banishment from their severall play-houses.^[58] This stagnant period ended once Charles II came back to the throne in 1660 in the Restoration. Theatre (among other arts) exploded, with influence from French culture, since Charles had been exiled in France in the years previous to his reign.

In 1660, two companies were licensed to perform, the Duke’s Company and the King’s Company. Performances were held in converted buildings, such as Lisle’s Tennis Court. The first West End theatre, known as Theatre Royal in Covent Garden, London, was designed by Thomas Killigrew and built on the site of the present Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.^[59]

One of the big changes was the new theatre house. Instead of the type of the Elizabethan era, such as the Globe Theatre, round with no place for the actors to prepare for the next act and with no «theatre manners», the theatre house became transformed into a place of refinement, with a stage in front and stadium seating facing it. Since seating was no longer all the way around the stage, it became prioritized—some seats were obviously better than others. The king would have the best seat in the house: the very middle of the theatre, which got the widest view of the stage as well as the best way to see the point of view and vanishing point that the stage was constructed around. Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg was one of the most influential set designers of the time because of his use of floor space and scenery.

Because of the turmoil before this time, there was still some controversy about what should and should not be put on the stage. Jeremy Collier, a preacher, was one of the heads in this movement through his piece A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage. The beliefs in this paper were mainly held by non-theatre goers and the remainder of the Puritans and very religious of the time. The main question was if seeing something immoral on stage affects behavior in the lives of those who watch it, a controversy that is still playing out today.^[60]

The seventeenth century had also introduced women to the stage, which was considered inappropriate earlier. These women were regarded as celebrities (also a newer concept, thanks to ideas on individualism that arose in the wake of Renaissance Humanism), but on the other hand, it was still very new and revolutionary that they were on the stage, and some said they were unladylike, and looked down on them. Charles II did not like young men playing the parts of young women, so he asked that women play their own parts.^[61] Because women were allowed on the stage, playwrights had more leeway with plot twists, like women dressing as men, and having narrow escapes from morally sticky situations as forms of comedy.

Comedies were full of the young and very much in vogue, with the storyline following their love lives: commonly a young roguish hero professing his love to the chaste and free minded heroine near the end of the play, much like Sheridan’s The School for Scandal. Many of the comedies were fashioned after the French tradition, mainly Molière, again hailing back to the French influence brought back by the King and the Royals after their exile. Molière was one of the top comedic playwrights of the time, revolutionizing the way comedy was written and performed by combining Italian commedia dell’arte and neoclassical French comedy to create some of the longest lasting and most influential satiric comedies.^[62] Tragedies were similarly victorious in their sense of righting political power, especially poignant because of the recent Restoration of the Crown.^[63] They were also imitations of French tragedy, although the French had a larger distinction between comedy and tragedy, whereas the English fudged the lines occasionally and put some comedic parts in their tragedies. Common forms of non-comedic plays were sentimental comedies as well as something that would later be called tragédie bourgeoise, or domestic tragedy—that is, the tragedy of common life—were more popular in England because they appealed more to English sensibilities.^[64]

While theatre troupes were formerly often travelling, the idea of the national theatre gained support in the 18th century, inspired by Ludvig Holberg. The major promoter of the idea of the national theatre in Germany, and also of the Sturm und Drang poets, was Abel Seyler, the owner of the Hamburgische Entreprise and the Seyler Theatre Company.^[65]

Through the 19th century, the popular theatrical forms of Romanticism, melodrama, Victorian burlesque and the well-made plays of Scribe and Sardou gave way to the problem plays of Naturalism and Realism; the farces of Feydeau; Wagner’s operatic Gesamtkunstwerk; musical theatre (including Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas); F. C. Burnand’s, W. S. Gilbert’s and Oscar Wilde’s drawing-room comedies; Symbolism; proto-Expressionism in the late works of August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen;^[67] and Edwardian musical comedy.

These trends continued through the 20th century in the realism of Stanislavski and Lee Strasberg, the political theatre of Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht, the so-called Theatre of the Absurd of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco, American and British musicals, the collective creations of companies of actors and directors such as Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, experimental and postmodern theatre of Robert Wilson and Robert Lepage, the postcolonial theatre of August Wilson or Tomson Highway, and Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed.

Types[edit]

Drama[edit]

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance.^[68] The term comes from a Greek word meaning «action», which is derived from the verb δράω, dráō, «to do» or «to act». The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception. The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception.^[69] The early modern tragedy Hamlet (1601) by Shakespeare and the classical Athenian tragedy Oedipus Rex (c. 429 BCE) by Sophocles are among the masterpieces of the art of drama.^[70] A modern example is Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill (1956).^[71]

Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle’s Poetics (c. 335 BCE); the earliest work of dramatic theory.^[n] The use of «drama» in the narrow sense to designate a specific type of play dates from the 19th century. Drama in this sense refers to a play that is neither a comedy nor a tragedy—for example, Zola’s Thérèse Raquin (1873) or Chekhov’s Ivanov (1887). In Ancient Greece however, the word drama encompassed all theatrical plays, tragic, comic, or anything in between.

Drama is often combined with music and dance: the drama in opera is generally sung throughout; musicals generally include both spoken dialogue and songs; and some forms of drama have incidental music or musical accompaniment underscoring the dialogue (melodrama and Japanese Nō, for example).^[o] In certain periods of history (the ancient Roman and modern Romantic) some dramas have been written to be read rather than performed.^[p] In improvisation, the drama does not pre-exist the moment of performance; performers devise a dramatic script spontaneously before an audience.^[q]

Musical theatre[edit]

Music and theatre have had a close relationship since ancient times—Athenian tragedy, for example, was a form of dance-drama that employed a chorus whose parts were sung (to the accompaniment of an aulos—an instrument comparable to the modern oboe), as were some of the actors’ responses and their ‘solo songs’ (monodies).^[72] Modern musical theatre is a form of theatre that also combines music, spoken dialogue, and dance. It emerged from comic opera (especially Gilbert and Sullivan), variety, vaudeville, and music hall genres of the late 19th and early 20th century.^[73] After the Edwardian musical comedy that began in the 1890s, the Princess Theatre musicals of the early 20th century, and comedies in the 1920s and 1930s (such as the works of Rodgers and Hammerstein), with Oklahoma! (1943), musicals moved in a more dramatic direction.^[r] Famous musicals over the subsequent decades included My Fair Lady (1956), West Side Story (1957), The Fantasticks (1960), Hair (1967), A Chorus Line (1975), Les Misérables (1980), Cats (1981), Into the Woods (1986), and The Phantom of the Opera (1986),^[74] as well as more contemporary hits including Rent (1994), The Lion King (1997), Wicked (2003), Hamilton (2015) and Frozen (2018).

Musical theatre may be produced on an intimate scale Off-Broadway, in regional theatres, and elsewhere, but it often includes spectacle. For instance, Broadway and West End musicals often include lavish costumes and sets supported by multimillion-dollar budgets.

Comedy[edit]

Theatre productions that use humour as a vehicle to tell a story qualify as comedies. This may include a modern farce such as Boeing Boeing or a classical play such as As You Like It. Theatre expressing bleak, controversial or taboo subject matter in a deliberately humorous way is referred to as black comedy. Black Comedy can have several genres like slapstick humour, dark and sarcastic comedy.

Tragedy[edit]

Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude: in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.

Aristotle’s phrase «several kinds being found in separate parts of the play» is a reference to the structural origins of drama. In it the spoken parts were written in the Attic dialect whereas the choral (recited or sung) ones in the Doric dialect, these discrepancies reflecting the differing religious origins and poetic metres of the parts that were fused into a new entity, the theatrical drama.

Tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilisation.^[76][77] That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—»the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity,» as Raymond Williams puts it.^[78] From its obscure origins in the theatres of Athens 2,500 years ago, from which there survives only a fraction of the work of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, through its singular articulations in the works of Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Racine, and Schiller, to the more recent naturalistic tragedy of Strindberg, Beckett’s modernist meditations on death, loss and suffering, and Müller’s postmodernist reworkings of the tragic canon, tragedy has remained an important site of cultural experimentation, negotiation, struggle, and change.^[79][80] In the wake of Aristotle’s Poetics (335 BCE), tragedy has been used to make genre distinctions, whether at the scale of poetry in general (where the tragic divides against epic and lyric) or at the scale of the drama (where tragedy is opposed to comedy). In the modern era, tragedy has also been defined against drama, melodrama, the tragicomic, and epic theatre.^[s]

Improvisation[edit]

Improvisation has been a consistent feature of theatre, with the Commedia dell’arte in the sixteenth century being recognised as the first improvisation form. Popularized by Nobel Prize Winner Dario Fo and troupes such as the Upright Citizens Brigade improvisational theatre continues to evolve with many different streams and philosophies. Keith Johnstone and Viola Spolin are recognized as the first teachers of improvisation in modern times, with Johnstone exploring improvisation as an alternative to scripted theatre and Spolin and her successors exploring improvisation principally as a tool for developing dramatic work or skills or as a form for situational comedy. Spolin also became interested in how the process of learning improvisation was applicable to the development of human potential.^[81] Spolin’s son, Paul Sills popularized improvisational theatre as a theatrical art form when he founded, as its first director, The Second City in Chicago.

Theories[edit]

Having been an important part of human culture for more than 2,500 years, theatre has evolved a wide range of different theories and practices. Some are related to political or spiritual ideologies, while others are based purely on «artistic» concerns. Some processes focus on a story, some on theatre as event, and some on theatre as catalyst for social change. The classical Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his seminal treatise, Poetics (c. 335 BCE) is the earliest-surviving example and its arguments have influenced theories of theatre ever since.^[16][17] In it, he offers an account of what he calls «poetry» (a term which in Greek literally means «making» and in this context includes drama—comedy, tragedy, and the satyr play—as well as lyric poetry, epic poetry, and the dithyramb). He examines its «first principles» and identifies its genres and basic elements; his analysis of tragedy constitutes the core of the discussion.^[82]

Aristotle argues that tragedy consists of six qualitative parts, which are (in order of importance) mythos or «plot», ethos or «character», dianoia or «thought», lexis or «diction», melos or «song», and opsis or «spectacle».^[83][84] «Although Aristotle’s Poetics is universally acknowledged in the Western critical tradition», Marvin Carlson explains, «almost every detail about his seminal work has aroused divergent opinions.»^[85] Important theatre practitioners of the 20th century include Konstantin Stanislavski, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Jacques Copeau, Edward Gordon Craig, Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski, Augusto Boal, Eugenio Barba, Dario Fo, Viola Spolin, Keith Johnstone and Robert Wilson (director).

Stanislavski treated the theatre as an art-form that is autonomous from literature and one in which the playwright’s contribution should be respected as that of only one of an ensemble of creative artists.^{[86][87][88][89][t]} His innovative contribution to modern acting theory has remained at the core of mainstream western performance training for much of the last century.^{[90][91][92][93][94]} That many of the precepts of his system of actor training seem to be common sense and self-evident testifies to its hegemonic success.^[95] Actors frequently employ his basic concepts without knowing they do so.^[95] Thanks to its promotion and elaboration by acting teachers who were former students and the many translations of his theoretical writings, Stanislavski’s ‘system’ acquired an unprecedented ability to cross cultural boundaries and developed an international reach, dominating debates about acting in Europe and the United States.^{[90][96][97][98]} Many actors routinely equate his ‘system’ with the North American Method, although the latter’s exclusively psychological techniques contrast sharply with Stanislavski’s multivariant, holistic and psychophysical approach, which explores character and action both from the ‘inside out’ and the ‘outside in’ and treats the actor’s mind and body as parts of a continuum.^[99][100]

Technical aspects[edit]

Theatre presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception. The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception.^[69] The production of plays usually involves contributions from a playwright, director, a cast of actors, and a technical production team that includes a scenic or set designer, lighting designer, costume designer, sound designer, stage manager, production manager and technical director. Depending on the production, this team may also include a composer, dramaturg, video designer or fight director.

Stagecraft is a generic term referring to the technical aspects of theatrical, film, and video production. It includes, but is not limited to, constructing and rigging scenery, hanging and focusing of lighting, design and procurement of costumes, makeup, procurement of props, stage management, and recording and mixing of sound. Stagecraft is distinct from the wider umbrella term of scenography. Considered a technical rather than an artistic field, it relates primarily to the practical implementation of a designer’s artistic vision.

In its most basic form, stagecraft is managed by a single person (often the stage manager of a smaller production) who arranges all scenery, costumes, lighting, and sound, and organizes the cast. At a more professional level, for example in modern Broadway houses, stagecraft is managed by hundreds of skilled carpenters, painters, electricians, stagehands, stitchers, wigmakers, and the like. This modern form of stagecraft is highly technical and specialized: it comprises many sub-disciplines and a vast trove of history and tradition. The majority of stagecraft lies between these two extremes. Regional theatres and larger community theatres will generally have a technical director and a complement of designers, each of whom has a direct hand in their respective designs.

Sub-categories and organization[edit]

There are many modern theatre movements which go about producing theatre in a variety of ways. Theatrical enterprises vary enormously in sophistication and purpose. People who are involved vary from novices and hobbyists (in community theatre) to professionals (in Broadway and similar productions). Theatre can be performed with a shoestring budget or on a grand scale with multimillion-dollar budgets. This diversity manifests in the abundance of theatre sub-categories, which include:

• Broadway theatre and West End theatre
• Street theatre
• Community theatre
• Playback theatre
• Dinner theater
• Fringe theatre
• Off-Broadway and Off West End
• Off-Off-Broadway
• Regional theatre in the United States
• Touring theatre
• Summer stock theatre

Repertory companies[edit]

While most modern theatre companies rehearse one piece of theatre at a time, perform that piece for a set «run», retire the piece, and begin rehearsing a new show, repertory companies rehearse multiple shows at one time. These companies are able to perform these various pieces upon request and often perform works for years before retiring them. Most dance companies operate on this repertory system. The Royal National Theatre in London performs on a repertory system.

Repertory theatre generally involves a group of similarly accomplished actors, and relies more on the reputation of the group than on an individual star actor. It also typically relies less on strict control by a director and less on adherence to theatrical conventions, since actors who have worked together in multiple productions can respond to each other without relying as much on convention or external direction.^[101]

Other terminology[edit]

A theatre company is an organisation that produces theatrical performances,^[3] as distinct from a theatre troupe (or acting company), which is a group of theatrical performers working together.^[4]

A touring company is an independent theatre or dance company that travels, often internationally, being presented at a different theatre in each city.^{[citation needed]}

In order to put on a piece of theatre, both a theatre company and a theatre venue are needed. When a theatre company is the sole company in residence at a theatre venue, this theatre (and its corresponding theatre company) are called a resident theatre or a producing theatre, because the venue produces its own work. Other theatre companies, as well as dance companies, who do not have their own theatre venue, perform at rental theatres or at presenting theatres. Both rental and presenting theatres have no full-time resident companies. They do, however, sometimes have one or more part-time resident companies, in addition to other independent partner companies who arrange to use the space when available. A rental theatre allows the independent companies to seek out the space, while a presenting theatre seeks out the independent companies to support their work by presenting them on their stage.^{[citation needed]}

Some performance groups perform in non-theatrical spaces. Such performances can take place outside or inside, in a non-traditional performance space, and include street theatre, and site-specific theatre. Non-traditional venues can be used to create more immersive or meaningful environments for audiences. They can sometimes be modified more heavily than traditional theatre venues, or can accommodate different kinds of equipment, lighting and sets.^[102]

Unions[edit]

There are many theatre unions, including:

• Actors’ Equity Association (AEA), for actors and stage managers in the U.S.)^[103]
• Canadian Actors’ Equity Association, for actors in Canada
• Equity, for many kind of performing artists as well as designers, directors, and stage managers in the UK^[104]
• International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), for designers and technicians).^[103]
• Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, an Australian union created in 1992 as a merger of the unions covering actors, journalists and entertainment industry employees^[105]
• Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC)^[103]

See also[edit]

Explanatory notes[edit]

Citations[edit]

General sources[edit]

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

• Theatre Archive Project (UK) British Library & University of Sheffield.
• University of Bristol Theatre Collection
• Music Hall and Theatre History of Britain and Ireland

1.The word «theatre» comes from a Greek word meaning a place for seeing.
2.Theatre includes everything that is involved in production, such as the script, the stage, the performing com­pany, and the audience.
3.Theatre is not the same as drama, though the words are frequently used interchangeably.
4.Drama refers to the literary part of a performance that is the play.
5 There are different forms of drama, such as tragedy, seri­ous drama, melodrama, and comedy.
6.Theatre requires many kinds of artists for its creation.
7.These specialists include a playwright, perform­ers, a director, a scene designer, a costumier, a lighting designer, and var­ious technicians.

For many productions composers, musicians, and a choreographer (a creator of dances) are needed. A director of the the­atre integrates all aspects of production including scenery, costumes, makeup, lighting, sound effects, music, and dancing.There are many people who love and visit different kinds of theatres: drama theatres, musical theatres, puppet theatres, opera and ballet hous­es. A successful theatrical event is an exciting and stimulating experience.There are a lot of theatres around the world. The theatrical centre the United Kingdom is London. There are more than 40 theatres in West End of London, such as the Royal National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, which operate a repertory system and use a regular company. The best-known centre of professional theatre in the United State is New York City, though Chicago and Los Angeles have become major centers as well. Moscow and St. Petersburg are the two major theatre centers in Russia. The Maly and Bolshoi Theatre are known all over the world.

The word «theatre»
comes from a Greek word meaning a place for seeing. In this sense,
the word refers to the space where performances are staged. However
in a broad sense, theatre includes everything that is involved in
production, such as the script, the stage, the performing com­pany,
and the audience. In addition, theatre refers to a part of human
culture that began in ancient times.

Theatre is not the same as
drama, though the words are frequently used interchangeably. Drama
refers to the literary part of a performance that is the play. There
are different forms of drama, such as tragedy, seri­ous drama,
melodrama, and comedy.

Theatre is one of the most
complex arts. It requires many kinds of artists for its creation.
These specialists include a playwright, perform­ers, a director,
a scene designer, a costumier, a lighting designer, and var­ious
technicians. For many productions composers, musicians, and a
choreographer (a creator of dances) are needed. A director of the
the­atre integrates all aspects of production including scenery,
costumes, makeup, lighting, sound effects, music, and dancing.

There
are many people who love and visit different kinds of theatres: drama
theatres, musical theatres, puppet theatres, opera and ballet
hous­es. A successful theatrical event is an exciting and
stimulating experience.

There
are a lot of theatres around the world. The theatrical centre the
United Kingdom is London. There are more than 40 theatres in West End
of London, such as the Royal National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare
Theatre, which operate a repertory system and use a regular company.
The best-known centre of professional theatre in the United State is
New York City, though Chicago and Los Angeles have become major
centers as well. Moscow and St. Petersburg are the two major theatre
centers in Russia. The Maly and Bolshoi Theatre are known all over
the world.

EXERCISE
11. Read
and give a summary of the text.

Music in our life

Music
is one of the oldest arts. People probably started singing as soon as
language developed. Many ancient peoples, including the Egyptians,
Chinese, Babylonians, and the people of India, used music in
religious ceremonies. The first written music dates from about 2500
В.
С

Nowadays,
music takes many forms around the world. There are two chief kinds of
music: classical and popular. Classical music includes symphonies,
operas, and ballets. Popular music includes country music, folk
music, jazz, rock music, etc.

Music
plays a major role in other arts. Opera combines singing orchestral
music with drama. Ballet and other forms of dancing n. music to help
the dancers. Film and TV dramas use music to help mood and emphasize
the action.

Music
plays an important part in all cultures and social activities.
Nearly all peoples use music in their religious services to create a
state of mystery and awe, a feeling of distance from the daily world.
Many. people perform music for their own satisfaction. Singing in a
choir, playing a musical instrument in a band can be very enjoyable.
Music provides people with a way to express their feelings.

EXERCISE
12. Find
in the texts English equivalents for these words and word
combinations:

место
для просмотра, в этом смысле, однако, в
широком смысле слова, где осуществляется
постановка спектаклей, театральная
труппа, публика, человеческая культура,
в древние времена, хотя, взаимозаменяемо,
то есть, такие как, один из самых сложных
видов искусства, различные технические
работники, для многих спектаклей,
объединяет, грим, освещение, кукольные
театры, театры оперы и балета, успешное
театральное событие, по всему миру,
постоянная труппа, также, главные
театральные центры, как только, в
религиозных церемониях, относится к,
до нашей эры, в наши дни, принимает многие
формы, музыка в стиле «кантри»,
фольклорная музыка, создать настроение,
усилить действие, в об­щественной
деятельности, почти все народы, состояние
тайны и благоговейного страха, повседневная
жизнь, выражение чувств.

EXERCISE
13.
a)
Find in the texts the words, which have the similar meanings as the
following words:

watching, comprises, started,
old, often, various, complicated, com­bines, many, main, also,
perhaps, to assist, almost, wide;

b) Find in the texts the
words, which have the opposite meanings to the following words:

narrow, finished, simple, the
youngest, the last, without, rest.

EXERCISE
14.
Fill
in the blanks with the missing words in the fol­lowing sentences;
the first letter of each word has been given to help you:

1.
The
performances are staged in the t… 2. The words «theatre»
and «d…» are used interchangeably. 3. Theatre requires
many kinds of art­ists, such as performers, a
lighting
designer, a s… designer, etc. 4. There are different kinds of
theatres, such as drama theatres, opera and ballet houses, p…
theatres, etc. 5. A successful performance is always an e…
experience. 6. The Royal Shakespeare Theatre operates ar… system.
7. Chicago and Los Angeles are m… theatrical centers as well. 8.
Many peoples use m… in religious ceremonies. 9. Opera combines
singing and o… music with drama. 10. Films use music to set the
m….

EXERCISE
15.
Find
in the texts, translate, and analyze:

a)
grammar forms with the ending -ing:

a Greek word meaning a place
for seeing

the performing company

a lighting designer

all aspects of production
including scenery, dancing, etc.

an exciting and stimulating
experience

many ancient people including
the Egyptians, Chinese

people started singing

opera combines singing and
orchestral music

other forms of dancing

singing in a choir

playing a musical instrument

b)
grammar forms with the ending -ed:

are
staged
people
started singing

is
involved
language
developed

are
used
they
used music

are needed the United States

c)
grammar
forms with the ending -s:

the word comes from the word refers to theatre includes the words drama refers different forms it requires many kinds these specialists various technicians social activities

a lot of theatres the Egyptians religious ceremonies the music dates from music takes many forms music includes symphonies music plays a major role opera combines in all cultures

EXERCISE
16. Complete
the following sentences in a logical way:

1.
The word «theatre» comes from a Greek word meaning …

2.
Theatre includes everything that is involved in production, such as
…

3.
Theatre refers to a part of human culture that…

4.
Theatre is not the same as drama though …

5.
Theatre requires many kinds of artists for …

6.
A director of the theatre integrates all aspects of …

7.
Many people love and visit different kinds of theatres:…

8.
In the UK, there are more than …

9.
In the USA, the best-known theatre centre is …

10.
In Russia, the two major theatre centers are …

11.
Music plays a major role in …

12.
Opera combines singing and …

13.
Ballet needs music …

14.
Film and TV dramas use music to help …

15.
Music provides people with a way …

EXERCISE
17: Answer
the questions about the theatre:

1)
What does the word «theatre» come from?

2)
What does theatre include?

3)
Is theatre the same as drama?

4)
What does drama refer to?

5)
What forms of drama do you know?

6)
What does theatre require?

7)
Who integrates all aspects of productions in the theatre?

What kinds of theatres do you know?

9)
Where is the theatrical centre in the UK?

10)
How many theatres are there in West End of London?

11)
Where are the theatre centers in the USA?

12)
What theatre centers in Russia do you know?

13)
Have you ever been to Bolshoi Theatre?

14)
Do you often visit theatres?

15)
What kind of theatre do you prefer?

16)
What kind of music do you like?

17)
What kind of classical music do you know?

18)
What kind of popular music do you know?

19)
Why does music play a major role in other arts?

20)
What does music provide people with?

EXERCISE
18. Agree
or disagree with the following statements; add some more-information:

1.
Theatre is the same as drama. 2. Theatre is one of the most com­plex
arts. 3. There are different kinds of theatres. 4. There are not many
theatres in West End of London. 5. There are many theatres in Moscow.

EXERCISE
19.
a)
Read and translate the following dialogue; b) mem­orize and
dramatize the dialogue; c) act out a similar dialogue.

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Текст.
The word «theatre» comes from a Greek word meaning a place for seeing. In this sense, the word refers to the space where performances are staged. However in a broad sense, theatre includes everything that is involved in production, such as the script, the stage, the performing com­pany, and the audience. In addition, theatre refers to a part of human culture that began in ancient times.Theatre is not the same as drama, though the words are frequently used interchangeably. Drama refers to the literary part of a performance that is the play. There are different forms of drama, such as tragedy, seri­ous drama, melodrama, and comedy.Theatre is one of the most complex arts. It requires many kinds of artists for its creation. These specialists include a playwright, perform­ers, a director, a scene designer, a costumier, a lighting designer, and var­ious technicians. For many productions composers, musicians, and a choreographer (a creator of dances) are needed. A director of the the­atre integrates all aspects of production including scenery, costumes, makeup, lighting, sound effects, music, and dancing.There are many people who love and visit different kinds of theatres: drama theatres, musical theatres, puppet theatres, opera and ballet hous­es. A successful theatrical event is an exciting and stimulating experience.There are a lot of theatres around the world. The theatrical centre the United Kingdom is London. There are more than 40 theatres in West End of London, such as the Royal National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, which operate a repertory system and use a regular company. The best-known centre of professional theatre in the United State is New York City, though Chicago and Los Angeles have become major centers as well. Moscow and St. Petersburg are the two major theatre centers in Russia. The Maly and Bolshoi Theatre are known all over the world.
Задание.
Agree or disagree with the following statements. Add some more informations.
1. Theatre is the same as drama. 2. Theatre is one of the most com­plex arts. 3. There are different kinds of theatres. 4. There are not many theatres in West End of London. 5. There are many theatres in Moscow.

Asked by: Forrest Walker III

Score: 4.6/5
(49 votes)

Theatre. Theatre, also spelled theater, in architecture, a building or space in which a performance may be given before an audience. The word is from the Greek theatron

theatron

The theatron was the seating area, built into a hill to create a natural viewing space. The first seats in Greek theatres (other than just sitting on the ground) were wooden, but around 499 BC the practice of inlaying stone blocks into the side of the hill to create permanent, stable seating became more common.

, “a place of seeing.” A theatre usually has a stage area where the performance itself takes place.

Where did the term theatre come from?

Though the word theatre is derived from the Greek theaomai, “to see,” the performance itself may appeal either to the ear or to the eye, as is suggested by the interchangeability of the terms spectator (which derives from words meaning “to view”) and audience (which derives from words meaning “to hear”).

Where did the name theatre come from and what was the early meaning?

Where did the name theatre come from, and what was the early meaning? It came from Greece and its meaning is «to act» or «to do». Also there is the Greek word theatron which means «a place for seeing». … An essential ingredient in live theatre is the audience.

Where do the words theatre and drama originate from?

The term drama comes from a Greek word meaning «action» (Classical Greek: δράμα, dráma), which is derived from «to do» (Classical Greek: δράω, dráō). The enactment of drama in theater, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, is a widely used art form that is found in virtually all cultures.

When was the word theatre first used?

29 related questions found

Theatre (or in American English theater^[1]) is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance. Elements of design and stagecraft are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience.^[2] The specific place of the performance is also named by the word «theatre» as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, “a place for viewing”) and θεάομαι (theáomai, “to see», «to watch», «to observe”).

Modern Western theatre derives in large measure from ancient Greek drama, from which it borrows technical terminology, classification into genres, and many of its themes, stock characters, and plot elements. Theatre scholar Patrice Pavis defines theatricality, theatrical language, stage writing, and the specificity of theatre as synonymous expressions that differentiate theatre from the other performing arts, literature, and the arts in general.^[3] Theatre includes performances of plays and musicals. Although it can be defined broadly to include opera and ballet, those art forms are outside the scope of this article.

History

Classical and Hellenistic Greece

The city-state of Athens invented theatre.^[4] It was part of a broader culture of theatricality and performance in classical Greece that included festivals, religious rituals, politics, law, athletics and gymnastics, music, poetry, weddings, funerals, and symposia.^[5] Participation in the city-state’s many festivals—and attendance at the City Dionysia as an audience member (or even as a participant in the theatrical productions) in particular—was an important part of citizenship.^[6] Civic participation also involved the evaluation of the rhetoric of orators evidenced in performances in the law-court or political assembly, both of which were understood as analagous to the theatre and increasingly came to absorb its dramatic vocabulary.^[7] The Greeks also developed the concepts of dramatic criticism, acting as a career, and theatre architecture.^[8] The theatre of ancient Greece consisted of three types of drama: tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play.^[9]

Athenian tragedy—the oldest surviving form of tragedy—is a type of dance-drama that formed an important part of the theatrical culture of the city-state.^[10] Having emerged sometime during the 6th century BCE, it flowered during the 5th century BCE (from the end of which it began to spread throughout the Greek world), and continued to be popular until the beginning of the Hellenistic period.^[11] No tragedies from the 6th century BCE and only 32 of the more than a thousand that were performed in during the 5th century BCE have survived.^[12] We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.^[13] The origins of tragedy remain obscure, though by the 5th century BCE it was institutionalised in competitions (agon) held as part of festivities celebrating Dionysos (the god of wine and fertility).^[14] As contestants in the City Dionysia’s competition (the most prestigious of the festivals to stage drama) playwrights were required to present a tetralogy of plays (though the individual works were not necessarily connected by story or theme), which usually consisted of three tragedies and one satyr play.^[15] The performance of tragedies at the City Dionysia may have begun as early as 534 BCE; official records (didaskaliai) begin from 501 BCE, when the satyr play was introduced.^[16] Most Athenian tragedies dramatise events from Greek mythology, though The Persians—which stages the Persian response to news of their military defeat at the Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE—is the notable exception in the surviving drama.^[17] When Aeschylus won first prize for it at the City Dionysia in 472 BCE, he had been writing tragedies for more than 25 years, yet its tragic treatment of recent history is the earliest example of drama to survive.^[18] More than 130 years later, the philosopher Aristotle analysed 5th-century Athenian tragedy in the oldest surviving work of dramatic theory—his Poetics (c. 335 BCE).

Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods, «Old Comedy», «Middle Comedy», and «New Comedy». Old Comedy survives today largely in the form of the eleven surviving plays of Aristophanes, while Middle Comedy is largely lost (preserved only in relatively short fragments in authors such as Athenaeus of Naucratis). New Comedy is known primarily from the substantial papyrus fragments of Menander. Aristotle defined comedy as a representation of laughable people that involves some kind of blunder or ugliness that does not cause pain or disaster.^[19]

Roman theatre

Western theatre developed and expanded considerably under the Romans. The Roman historian Livy wrote that the Romans first experienced theatre in the 4th century BCE, with a performance by Etruscan actors.^[20] Beacham argues that they had been familiar with «pre-theatrical practices» for some time before that recorded contact.^[21] The theatre of ancient Rome was a thriving and diverse art form, ranging from festival performances of street theatre, nude dancing, and acrobatics, to the staging of Plautus’s broadly appealing situation comedies, to the high-style, verbally elaborate tragedies of Seneca. Although Rome had a native tradition of performance, the Hellenization of Roman culture in the 3rd century BCE had a profound and energizing effect on Roman theatre and encouraged the development of Latin literature of the highest quality for the stage.

Post-classical theatre in the West

Theatre took on many alternate forms in the West between the 15th and 19th centuries, including commedia dell’arte and melodrama. The general trend was away from the poetic drama of the Greeks and the Renaissance and toward a more naturalistic prose style of dialogue, especially following the Industrial Revolution.^[22]

Through the 19th century, the popular theatrical forms of Romanticism, melodrama, Victorian burlesque and the well-made plays of Scribe and Sardou gave way to the problem plays of Naturalism and Realism; the farces of Feydeau; Wagner’s operatic Gesamtkunstwerk; musical theatre (including Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas); F. C. Burnand’s, W. S. Gilbert’s and Wilde’s drawing-room comedies; Symbolism; proto-Expressionism in the late works of August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen;^[23] and Edwardian musical comedy.

These trends continued through the 20th century in the realism of Stanislavski and Lee Strasberg, the political theatre of Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht, the so-called Theatre of the Absurd of Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco, American and British musicals, the collective creations of companies of actors and directors such as Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, experimental and postmodern theatre of Robert Wilson and Robert Lepage, the postcolonial theatre of August Wilson or Tomson Highway, and Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed.

Eastern theatrical traditions

The earliest form of Indian theatre was the Sanskrit theatre.^[24] It began after the development of Greek and Roman theatre and before the development of theatre in other parts of Asia.^[24] It emerged sometime between the 2nd century BCE and the 1st century CE and flourished between the 1st century CE and the 10th, which was a period of relative peace in the history of India during which hundreds of plays were written.^[25] Japanese forms of Kabuki, Nō, and Kyōgen developed in the 17th century CE.^[26] Theatre in the medieval Islamic world included puppet theatre (which included hand puppets, shadow plays and marionette productions) and live passion plays known as ta’ziya, where actors re-enact episodes from Muslim history. In particular, Shia Islamic plays revolved around the shaheed (martyrdom) of Ali’s sons Hasan ibn Ali and Husayn ibn Ali. Secular plays were known as akhraja, recorded in medieval adab literature, though they were less common than puppetry and ta’ziya theatre.^[27]

Types

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance.^[28] The term comes from a Greek word meaning «action», which is derived from «to do». The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception. The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception.^[29] The early modern tragedy Hamlet (1601) by Shakespeare and the classical Athenian tragedy Oedipus the King (c. 429 BCE) by Sophocles are among the masterpieces of the art of drama.^[30] A modern example is Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill (1956).^[31]

Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle’s Poetics (c. 335 BCE)—the earliest work of dramatic theory.^[32] The use of «drama» in the narrow sense to designate a specific type of play dates from the 19th century. Drama in this sense refers to a play that is neither a comedy nor a tragedy—for example, Zola’s Thérèse Raquin (1873) or Chekhov’s Ivanov (1887).

Drama is often combined with music and dance: the drama in opera is generally sung throughout; musicals generally include both spoken dialogue and songs; and some forms of drama have incidental music or musical accompaniment underscoring the dialogue (melodrama and Japanese Nō, for example).^[33] In certain periods of history (the ancient Roman and modern Romantic) some dramas have been written to be read rather than performed.^[34] In improvisation, the drama does not pre-exist the moment of performance; performers devise a dramatic script spontaneously before an audience.^[35]

Musical theatre

Music and theatre have had a close relationship since ancient times—Athenian tragedy, for example, was a form of dance-drama that employed a chorus whose parts were sung (to the accompaniment of an aulos—an instrument comparable to the modern clarinet), as were some of the actors’ responses and their ‘solo songs’ (monodies).^[36] Modern musical theatre is a form of theatre that also combines music, spoken dialogue, and dance. It emerged from comic opera (especially Gilbert and Sullivan), variety, vaudeville, and music hall genres of the late 19th and early 20th century.^[37] After the Edwardian musical comedy that began in the 1890s, the Princess Theatre musicals of the early 20th century, and comedies in the 1920s and 1930s (such as the works of Rodgers and Hart), with Oklahoma! (1943), musicals moved in a more dramatic direction.^[38] Famous musicals over the subsequent decades included My Fair Lady (1956), West Side Story (1957), The Fantasticks (1960), Hair (1967), A Chorus Line (1975), Les Misérables (1980), and The Phantom of the Opera (1986).^[39]

Musical theatre may be produced on an intimate scale Off-Broadway, in regional theatres, and elsewhere, but it often includes spectacle. For instance, Broadway and West End musicals often include lavish costumes and sets supported by multi-million dollar budgets.

Comedy

Theatre productions that use humour as a vehicle to tell a story qualify as comedies. This may include a modern farce such as Boeing Boeing or a classical play such as As You Like It. Theatre expressing bleak, controversial or taboo subject matter in a deliberately humorous way is referred to as black comedy.

Tragedy

Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude;

in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play;

in the form of action, not of narrative;

through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.

Tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilisation.^[41] That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—»the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity,» as Raymond Williams puts it.^[42] From its obscure origins in the theatres of Athens 2,500 years ago, from which there survives only a fraction of the work of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, through its singular articulations in the works of Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Racine, and Schiller, to the more recent naturalistic tragedy of Strindberg, Beckett’s modernist meditations on death, loss and suffering, and Müller’s postmodernist reworkings of the tragic canon, tragedy has remained an important site of cultural experimentation, negotiation, struggle, and change.^[43] In the wake of Aristotle’s Poetics (335 BCE), tragedy has been used to make genre distinctions, whether at the scale of poetry in general (where the tragic divides against epic and lyric) or at the scale of the drama (where tragedy is opposed to comedy). In the modern era, tragedy has also been defined against drama, melodrama, the tragicomic, and epic theatre.^[44]

Theories of theatre

Having been an important part of human culture for more than 2,500 years, theatre has evolved a wide range of different theories and practices. Some are related to political or spiritual ideologies, while others are based purely on «artistic» concerns. Some processes focus on a story, some on theatre as event, and some on theatre as catalyst for social change. The classical Greek philosopher Aristotle’s Poetics (c. 335 BCE) is the earliest-surviving example and its arguments have influenced theories of theatre ever since.^[45] In it, he offers an account of what he calls «poetry» (a term which in Greek literally means «making» and in this context includes drama—comedy, tragedy, and the satyr play—as well as lyric poetry, epic poetry, and the dithyramb). He examines its «first principles» and identifies its genres and basic elements; his analysis of tragedy constitutes the core of the discussion.^[46] He argues that tragedy consists of six qualitative parts, which are (in order of importance) mythos or «plot», ethos or «character», dianoia or «thought», lexis or «diction», melos or «song», and opsis or «spectacle».^[47] «Although Aristotle’s Poetics is universally acknowledged in the Western critical tradition,» Marvin Carlson explains, «almost every detail about his seminal work has aroused divergent opinions.»^[48] Important theatre practitioners of the 20th century include Konstantin Stanislavski, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Edward Gordon Craig, Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud, Luís de Sttau Monteiro, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski, Augusto Boal, and Dario Fo.

Stanislavski treated the theatre as an art-form that is autonomous from literature and one in which the playwright’s contribution should be respected as that of only one of an ensemble of creative artists.^[49] His innovative contribution to modern acting theory has remained at the core of mainstream western performance training for much of the last century.^[50] That many of the precepts of his ‘system’ of actor training seem to be common sense and self-evident testifies to its hegemonic success.^[51] Actors frequently employ his basic concepts without knowing they do so.^[51] Thanks to its promotion and elaboration by acting teachers who were former students and the many translations of his theoretical writings, Stanislavski’s ‘system’ acquired an unprecedented ability to cross cultural boundaries and developed an international reach, dominating debates about acting in Europe and America.^[52] Many actors routinely equate his ‘system’ with the American Method, although the latter’s exclusively psychological techniques contrast sharply with Stanislavski’s multivariant, holistic and psychophysical approach, which explores character and action both from the ‘inside out’ and the ‘outside in’ and treats the actor’s mind and body as parts of a continuum.^[53]

Technical aspects of theatre

Theatre presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception. The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception.^[29] The production of plays usually involves contributions from a playwright, director, a cast of actors, and a technical production team that includes a scenic or set designer, lighting designer, costume designer, sound designer, stage manager, and production manager. Depending on the production, this team may also include a composer, dramaturg, video designer or fight director.

The technical aspects of theatrical production are described collectively as «stagecraft». This includes, but is not limited to, the construction and rigging of scenery, the hanging and focusing of lighting, the design and procurement of costumes, make-up, sourcing of props, stage management, and recording and mixing of sound. Stagecraft is considered a technical rather than an artistic field, and it relates primarily to the practical implementation of a designer’s artistic vision. This distinguishes it from the more recent, wider discipline of scenography.

Stagecraft may be implemented by any number of workers, from a single person (who arranges all scenery, costumes, lighting, sound, and organizes the cast) to hundreds of skilled carpenters, painters, electricians, stagehands, stitchers, wigmakers, and the like. This modern form of stagecraft is highly technical and specialized: it comprises many sub-disciplines and encompasses a vast trove of history and tradition. Regional theatres and larger community theatres will generally have a technical director and a complement of designers, each of whom has a direct hand in their respective designs.

Theatre organization and administration

There are many modern theatre movements which go about producing theatre in a variety of ways.

Theatrical enterprise varies enormously in sophistication and purpose. People who are involved vary from professionals to hobbyists to spontaneous novices. Theatre can be performed with no money at all or on a grand scale with multi-million dollar budgets. This diversity manifests in the abundance of theatre sub-categories, which include:

• Broadway theatre and West End theatre
• Community theatre
• Dinner theatre
• Fringe theatre
• Off-Broadway and Off West End
• Off-Off-Broadway
• Regional theatre
• Summer stock theatre

«West End theatre» is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre that is staged in the large theatres of London’s ‘Theatreland’, the West End.^[54] Along with New York’s Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. Seeing a West End show is a common tourist activity in London.^[33] Total attendances first surpassed 12 million in 2002 and 13 million in 2007, setting a new record for the West End.^[55] Since the late 1990s there has been an increase in the number of famous screen actors on the London stage.

Repertory companies

While most modern theatre companies rehearse one piece of theatre at a time, perform that piece for a set «run», retire the piece, and begin rehearsing a new show, repertory companies rehearse multiple shows at one time. These companies are able to perform these various pieces upon request and often perform works for years before retiring them. Most dance companies operate on this repertory system. The Royal National Theatre in London performs on a repertory system.

Repertory theatre generally involves a group of similarly accomplished actors, and relies more on the reputation of the group than on an individual star actor. It also typically relies less on strict control by a director and less on adherence to theatrical conventions, since actors who have worked together in multiple productions can respond to each other without relying as much on convention or external direction.^[56]

Producing vs. presenting

In order to put on a piece of theatre, both a theatre company and a theatre venue are needed. When a theatre company is the sole company in residence at a theatre venue, this theatre (and its corresponding theatre company) are called a resident theatre or a producing theatre, because the venue produces its own work. Other theatre companies, as well as dance companies, do not have their own theatre venue. These companies perform at rental theatres or at presenting theatres. Both rental and presenting theatres have no full time resident companies. They do, however, sometimes have one or more part time resident companies, in addition to other independent partner companies who arrange to use the space when available. A rental theatre allows the independent companies to seek out the space, while a presenting theatre seeks out the independent companies to support their work by presenting them on their stage.

Some performance groups perform in non-theatrical spaces. Such performances can take place outside or inside, in a non-traditional performance space, and include street theatre, and site specific theatre. Non-traditional venues can be used to create more immersive or meaningful environments for audiences. They can sometimes be modified more heavily than traditional theatre venues, or can accommodate different kinds of equipment, lighting and sets.^[57]

A touring company is an independent theatre or dance company that travels, often internationally, being presented at a different theatre in each city.

Unions

There are many theatre unions including Actors Equity Association (for actors and stage managers), the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE, for designers and technicians). Many theatres require that their staff be members of these organizations.

See also

Notes

Sources

External links

• Theatre Archive Project (UK) British Library & University of Sheffield.
• Theater Wikia – An editable database dedicated to all aspects of theatre.
• University of Bristol Theatre Collection
• Music Hall and Theatre History of Britain and Ireland

theatre, also spelled theater, in architecture, a building or space in which a performance may be given before an audience. The word is from the Greek theatron, “a place of seeing.” A theatre usually has a stage area where the performance itself takes place. Since ancient times the evolving design of theatres has been determined largely by the spectators’ physical requirements for seeing and hearing the performers and by the changing nature of the activity presented.

Origins of theatre space

The civilizations of the Mediterranean basin in general, the Far East, northern Europe, and the Western Hemisphere before the voyages of Christopher Columbus in the second half of the 15th century have all left evidence of constructions whose association with religious ritual activity relates them to the theatre. Studies in anthropology suggest that their forerunners were the campfire circles around which members of a primitive community would gather to participate in tribal rites. Karnak in ancient Egypt, Persepolis in Persia, and Knossos in Crete all offer examples of architectural structures, purposely ceremonial in design, of a size and configuration suitable for large audiences. They were used as places of assembly at which a priestly caste would attempt to communicate with supernatural forces.

The transition from ritual involving mass participation to something approaching drama, in which a clear distinction is made between active participants and passive onlookers, is incompletely understood. Eventually, however, the priestly caste and the performer became physically set apart from the spectators. Thus, theatre as place emerged.

Developments in ancient Greece

Visual and spatial aspects

During the earliest period of theatre in ancient Greece, when the poet Thespis—who is credited both with inventing tragedy and with being the first actor—came to Athens in 534 bce with his troupe on wagons, the performances were given in the agora (i.e., the marketplace), with wooden stands for audience seating; in 498, the stands collapsed and killed several spectators. Detailed literary accounts of theatre and scenery in ancient Greece can be found in De architectura libri decem, by the 1st-century-bce Roman writer Vitruvius, and in the Onomasticon, of the 2nd century ce, by the Greek scholar Julius Pollux. As these treatises appeared several hundred years after classical theatre, however, the accuracy of their descriptions is questionable.

Little survives of the theatres in which the earliest plays were performed, but essential details have been reconstructed from the architectural evidence of the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens, which has been remodeled several times since its construction in stone by the politician Lycurgus on the south slope of the Acropolis about 330 bce. The centre of the theatre was the original dancing place, a flat circular space containing the altar of Dionysus, called the orchestra. In the centre stood a platform with steps (bemata) leading to the altar (thymele). Nearby was the temple out of which the holy image would be carried on festival days so that the god could be present at the plays.

Theatrical representations, not yet wholly free of a religious element, directed their appeal toward the whole community, and attendance was virtually compulsory. Thus the first concern of theatre builders of the day was to provide sufficient space for large audiences. In the beginning, admission was free; later, when a charge was levied, poor citizens were given entrance money. It seems reasonable to assume, from the size of the theatres, that the actors performed on a raised platform (probably called the logeion, or “speaking place”) in order to be more visible and audible, while the chorus remained in the orchestra. In later times there was a high stage, with a marble frieze below and a short flight of steps up from the orchestra. The great Hellenistic theatre at Epidaurus had what is believed to have been a high, two-level stagehouse.

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The earliest productions did not have a background building. The actors dressed in the skēnē (from which the word “scene” is derived), which was then a small tent, and the chorus and actors entered together from the main approach, the parodos. The earliest properties, such as altars and rocks, could be set up at the edge of the terrace. The first extant drama for which a large building was necessary was Aeschylus’ trilogy the Oresteia, first produced in 458 bce. There has been controversy among historians as to whether the skēnē was set up inside a segment of the orchestra or outside the edge of the orchestra. The skēnē in its later development was probably a long, simple building at the left of the orchestra terrace.

In the first period of Greek drama, the principal element of the production was the chorus, the size of which appears to have varied considerably. In Aeschylus’ Suppliants, there were 50 members of the chorus, but in his other plays there were only 12, and Sophocles called for 15. The size of the chorus became smaller in the 5th century, as the ritual element of drama diminished. Since the number of actors increased as the chorus shrank, and the plots of the dramas became more complex, doubling of roles became necessary. On a completely open stage such substitutions were delayed, and the suspense of the drama was dissipated. Dramatic plausibility was also vitiated by the fact that gods and mortals, enemies and friends, always entered from the same direction. The addition of a scenic facade, with three doors, more than doubled the number of entrances and gave the playwright more freedom to develop dramatic tension. About 425 bce a firm stone basis was laid for an elaborate building, called a stoa, consisting of a long front wall interrupted at the sides by projecting wings, or paraskēnia. The spectators sat on wooden benches arranged in a fan shape divided by radiating aisles. The upper rows were benches of movable planks supported by separate stones planted in the ground. The seats of honour were stone slabs with inscriptions assigning them to the priests.

The background decoration consisted originally of a temporary wooden framework leaning against the front wall of the stoa and covered with movable screens. These screens were made of dried animal skins tinted red; it was not until Aeschylus that canvases in wooden frames were decorated according to the needs of a particular play. Aristotle credits Sophocles with the invention of scene painting, an innovation ascribed by others to Aeschylus. It is notable that Aeschylus took an interest in staging and is credited with the classic costume design. Simple Greek scenery was comparable with that of the 20th century; the impulse to visualize and particularize the background of the action became strong. Painted scenery was probably first used in production of the Oresteia; some 50 years afterward a second story was added to the wooden scene structure. A wooden colonnade, or portico, the proskēnion, was placed in front of the lower story of the building. This colonnade, which was long and low, suggested the exterior of either a house, a palace, or a temple. Painted screens set between the columns of the proskēnion suggested the locale.

In the beginning, scenery was probably altered slightly during the intermissions that separated the plays of a trilogy or a tetralogy or during the night between two festival days. By the latter part of the 5th century, scene changes were accomplished by means of movable painted screens. Several of these screens could be put up behind one another so that, when the first one was removed, the one immediately behind appeared.

Soon after the introduction of the facade, plays were uniformly set before a temple or a palace. To indicate a change of scene, the periaktoi were introduced. These were upright three-sided prisms—each side painted to represent a different locality—set flush with the palace or temple wall on either side of the stage. Several conventions were observed with regard to scenery; one was that if only the right periaktos was turned, it indicated a different locality in the same town. According to another convention, actors entering from the right were understood to be coming from the city or harbour and those from the left to be coming from the country.

The permanent facade was also used to hide the stage properties and the machinery. Evidence for the use of the so-called flying machine, the mēchanē (Latin machina), in the 5th century is given in the comedies of Aristophanes; a character in his play Peace ascends to heaven on a dung beetle and appeals to the scene shifter not to let him fall. The mēchanē consisted of a derrick and a crane. In the time of Euripides it was used conventionally for the epilogue, at which point a god descended from heaven to sort out the complications in the plot, a convention that became known as deus ex machina (“god from a machine”). The lavish use of flying machines is attested by the poet Antiphanes, who wrote that tragic playwrights lifted up a machine as readily as they lifted a finger when they had nothing else to say.

A wheeled platform or wagon, called ekkyklēma, was used to display the results of offstage actions, such as the bodies of murder victims. The ekkyklēma, like the periaktoi, was an expedient for open-air theatre, in which the possibilities for creating realistic illusions were severely limited. A realistic picture of an interior scene under a roof could not be shown, because the roof would block the view of those in the higher tiered seats of the auditorium. So the Greeks, to represent the interior of a palace, for example, wheeled out a throne on a round or square podium. New machines were added in the Hellenistic period, by which time the theatre had almost completely lost its religious basis. Among these new machines was the hemikyklion, a semicircle of canvas depicting a distant city, and a stropheion, a revolving machine, used to show heroes in heaven or battles at sea.

Howard Bay Clive Barker George C. Izenour

Presentation on theme: «Review Chapter 1. The word «theatre» comes from this Greek word which means seeing place…»— Presentation transcript:

1

Review Chapter 1

2

The word «theatre» comes from this Greek word which means seeing place…

3

What is theatron?

4

This is the name for a long standing theatre company or group of theatre practicioners.

5

What is troupe?

6

In this theatrical craft or job, technicians execute in proper sequence, and with carefully rehearsed timing, the light and sound cues, the shifting of scenery, the placement of properties, etc.

7

What is crewing?

8

The task of handling all necessary personnel, financing; promotion and legal efforts is the responsibility of this person.

9

What is the producer?

10

The responsibilities for admitting, seating, and providing for the general comfort of the audience falls to this person.

11

What is the house manager?

12

The person who controls and develops the artistic product and provides it with a unified vision.

13

What is the director?

14

This theatrical craft is usually executed away from the theatre building.

15

What is the playwriting?

16

This distinctive feature of theatre, separates it from other arts and started what we know as acting.

17

What is the impersonation?

18

He created the “paradox of the actor” that onstage the actor disappears or seems lifeless while the simulated character seems to live.

19

Who is Denis Diderot?

20

The English word for person comes from this Latin word for mask.

21

What is persona?

22

This mode of performance is less theatrical and more realistic.

23

What is representational?

24

This mode of performance acknowledges the audience— the performer jokes, and responds overtly to the audience.

25

What is presentational?

26

The mode of performance in which the audience watches interactions that are staged as if no audience were present at all.

27

What is representational?

28

an action focused around a particular conflict, which gives the action significance

29

What is a play?

30

The purging or cleansing of pity and terror, which the audience develops during the climax of a tragedy

31

What is catharsis?

32

Oedipus’ adoptive parents

33

Who are Polybus and Merope?

34

wrote Oedipus the King

35

Who is Sophocles?

36

Wrote the Poetics and is considered the first dramaturg.

37

Who is Aristotle?

38

The final scene, action, or lines in a play devoted to bringing the play to a new level of harmony, understanding, or resolution after the climax

39

denouement

40

The historical length of most plays

41

What is two to three hours?

42

The number of acts in traditional full length plays

43

What is three?

44

The minimal requirement for a theatre “building

45

What is a place to act and a place to watch?

46

In play construction, the single action that initiates the major conflict of the play

47

What is the inciting incident?

48

Oedipus’ wife and mother

49

Who is Jocasta?

50

The blind prophet who tells Oedipus that he is the killer of Laius.

51

Who is Tiresias?

52

Jocasta’s brother; Oedipus accuses him of trying to take over the throne

53

Who is Creon?

54

This is where Oedipus learned that his destiny was to kill his father and marry his mother

55

What is the oracle of Delphi?

56

Oedipus used these to stab out his eyes

57

A public meeting in ancient Greek times where the playwright and actors would publicize the play

58

What is a proagon?

59

Like when a circus comes to town, ancient greek plays often started with this.

60

What is a procession or parade?

61

In Elizabethan times, this would be flown above the playhouse to advertise the play

62

What is a flag?

63

Aristotle’s 6 elements (plot, character, thought, diction, music, spectacle) comprise this axis of play structure.

64

What is vertical?

65

Aristotle’s element that describes the play’s use of rhythm and sounds

66

What is music?

67

Aristotle’s element that includes words, epigrams, imagery and other literary devices…

68

What is diction?

69

The temporal events of the play; how the play is experienced in time is the ________ axis.

70

What is horizontal?

71

Aristotle’s element that includes all visual aspects of the play (lighting, costumes, scenery, etc)

72

What is spectacle?

73

Aristotle’s element that involves making an audience care.

74

What is character?

75

The abstracted intellectual content of the play.

76

What is theme?

77

dramatic genre purports to be serious but, in fact, deals with human issues on only the most superficial level, embellished with spectacular staging, sensational dialogue, and highly suspenseful and contrived plotting

78

What is melodrama?

79

Shakespeare often used this opening speech to give exposition to the audience.

80

What is prologue?

81

A play that dramatizes the key events in the life of a king or head of state, such as Shakespeare’s Henry IV

82

What is a history play?

Слово «театр» происходит от греческого слова , означающего место для просмотра. В этом смысле слово относится к пространству , где устраиваются различные спектакли. Однако в широком смысле, театр включает в себя все , что участвует в производстве, например, сценарий, сцена, исполняющей компании, и зрители. Кроме того, театр относится к части человеческой культуры , которая началась еще в древности.

Театр не такой же , как драма, хотя слова часто используются как взаимозаменяемые. Драма относится к литературной части производительности , которая является игра. Существуют различные формы драмы, такие как трагедия, серьезной драмы, мелодрамы и комедии.

Театр является одним из самых сложных искусств. Это требует много видов художников для его создания. Эти специалисты включают драматург, исполнители, режиссер, дизайнер сцены, костюмера, осветительного дизайнера, а также различные техники. Для многих производств композиторов, музыкантов и хореограф (создатель танцев) необходимы. Директор театра включает в себя все аспекты производства , включая декорации, костюмы, грим, освещение, звуковые эффекты, музыка и танцы.

Есть много людей , которые любят и посещают различные виды театров: драматических театров, музыкальные театры, кукольные театры, оперы и балета домов. Успешное театральное событие является захватывающим и стимулирующим опыт.

Есть много театров по всему миру. Театральный центр Великобритании Лондон. Есть более 40 театров в Уэст — Энд Лондона, такие как Королевский национальный театр, Королевский шекспировский театр, который действует система быстрого набора и использовать обычную компанию. Наиболее известным центром профессионального театра в Соединенных штате Нью — Йорк Сити, хотя Чикаго и Лос — Анджелесе стали основными центрами , а также. Москва и Санкт — Петербург являются двумя основными театральных центров в России. Малый и Большой театр известны во всем мире.