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Portal:Theatre

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The Theatre Portal

Ancient Greece theatre in Taormina, Sicily, Italy

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

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

Featured article

Richard Rodgers (left) and Oscar Hammerstein II (right)
Allegro is a musical by Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (book and lyrics), their third collaboration for the stage, which premiered on Broadway on October 10, 1947. After the immense successes of the first two Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, Oklahoma! and Carousel, the pair sought a subject for their next play. Hammerstein had long contemplated a serious work that would deal with the problems of an ordinary man in the fast-moving modern world. Rodgers and he sought to create a work that would be as innovative as their first two stage musicals. To that end, they created a play with a large cast, including a Greek chorus. After a disastrous tryout in New Haven, Connecticut, the musical opened on Broadway to a large advance sale of tickets and very mixed reviews. The Broadway run, directed by Agnes de Mille, ended after nine months; it had no West End production and has rarely been revived.

In this month

Comédie-Française in the 18th century

Noël Coward, c. 1920s
Noël Coward (1899–1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise". Coward achieved enduring success as a playwright, publishing more than 50 plays from his teens onwards. Many of his works, such as Hay Fever, Private Lives, Design for Living, Present Laughter and Blithe Spirit, have remained in the regular theatre repertoire. He composed hundreds of songs, in addition to well over a dozen musical theatre works (including the operetta Bitter Sweet and comic revues), poetry, several volumes of short stories, the novel Pomp and Circumstance, and a three-volume autobiography. Coward's stage and film acting and directing career spanned six decades, during which he starred in many of his own works. Coward won an Academy Honorary Award in 1943 for his naval film drama, In Which We Serve, and was knighted in 1969. In the 1950s he achieved fresh success as a cabaret performer, performing his own songs, such as "Mad Dogs and Englishmen", "London Pride" and "Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans". His plays and songs achieved new popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, and his work and style continue to influence popular culture.
  • ... that many designers and directors avoided the Vivian Beaumont Theater because of its unconventional mixture of stage designs?
  • ... that the RKO Keith's Theater, once described as one of New York City's "great theaters", later stood in ruins and was covered with graffiti?
  • ... that Lunt and Fontanne retired from Broadway after the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre was renamed after them?
  • ... that Stephen Colbert initially balked at hosting The Late Show at the Ed Sullivan Theater, but called for the theater's restoration after learning about its neo-Gothic dome?
  • ... that theatre critic Günther Rühle's books cover the history of theatre in Germany, its events and its people, from 1887 to 1966?
  • ... that while preparing for War Horse, theatre set designer Rae Smith spent weeks pretending to be a First World War British Army captain?

Selected quote

Edward Albee
A play is fiction — and fiction is fact distilled into truth.
Edward Albee, New York Times interview, 1966

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More did you know

Dorset Garden Theatre

  • ...that the audience of the Dorset Garden Theatre (pictured) in Restoration London found it fashionable and convenient to arrive by boat, thereby avoiding the crime-ridden area of Alsatia?
  • ...that Takemoto Gidayū's contributions to the form of bunraku (Japanese puppet theatre) were so influential that all chanters (narrators) in bunraku are now called gidayū?
  • ...that, before building the landmark Gandy Bridge, George Gandy was known for building a large successful theatre, originally derided as "Gandy's White Elephant"?

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