Portal:Theatre

Portal:Theatre

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

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

Featured article

Front cover of Playbill for Me and Juliet
Me and Juliet is a musical comedy with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II. The story deals with romance between the cast and crew backstage at a long-running musical, a show-within-the-show (also named Me and Juliet). The musical premiered in 1953 and ran for almost a year on Broadway, closing after it exhausted its advance sales. It received no Tony Award nominations. The play required complex machinery, designed by Jo Mielziner, so that the audience could view action not only on the stage but also in the wings and high above the stage near the spotlights. The show garnered less than favorable reviews, though Mielziner's staging won praise from audiences and critics. With the exception of a short run in Chicago, there was no national tour, and the show is rarely seen—although a small-scale production was presented by London's Finborough Theatre in 2010. "No Other Love" from the show became a hit record in 1953 for Perry Como and in 1956 for Ronnie Hilton.

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Punch

Gielgud performing in Much Ado About Nothing
John Gielgud (1904–2000) was an English actor and theatre director who, along with Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier, dominated the British stage for much of the 20th century. A member of the Terry family theatrical dynasty, he became a star in the West End and on Broadway by the 1930s, appearing in new works and classics. He began a parallel career as a director, and set up his own company at the Queen's Theatre, London. Though he made his first film in 1924 and had successes with The Good Companions (1933) and Julius Caesar (1953), he did not begin a regular film career until his sixties. He appeared in more than 60 films between Becket in 1964 (his first Academy Award nomination) and Elizabeth in 1998. As the acid-tongued Hobson in Arthur (1981) he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He earned a Golden Globe Award and two BAFTAs, and had the rare distinction of winning an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Tony. He broadcast more than 100 radio and television dramas and made commercial recordings of many plays, including ten of Shakespeare's. He was knighted in 1953 and was president of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1977 to 1989.

Selected quote

Peter Ustinov
By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.
Peter Ustinov, Christian Science Monitor, 1962

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This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Portal:Theatre, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.