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. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and
stagecraft such as
lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. 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").
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...)
The Restoration spectacular, or elaborately staged "machine play", hit the London public stage in the late 17th-century
Restoration period, enthralling audiences with action, music, dance, moveable
scenery,
baroque illusionistic painting, gorgeous costumes, and
special effects such as
trapdoor tricks, "flying" actors, and
fireworks. These shows have always had a bad reputation as a vulgar and commercial threat to the witty, "legitimate"
Restoration drama; however, they drew Londoners in unprecedented numbers and left them dazzled and delighted. Basically home-grown and with roots in the early 17th-century
courtmasque, though never ashamed of borrowing ideas and stage technology from French
opera, the spectaculars are sometimes called "English opera". The expense of mounting ever more elaborate scenic productions drove the two competing theatre companies into a dangerous spiral of huge expenditure and correspondingly huge losses or profits.
15 March 1920 – The Blue Flame, considered one of the worst plays ever performed on Broadway, debuts at the Shubert Theatre
20 March 1828 – Birth of Henrik Ibsen, often called the "father of modern drama", whose plays challenged
Victorian morality
22 March 1832 – Death of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (pictured), whose magnum opusFaust was completed the year of his death and published the year after
26 March 1996 –
Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannous was the first Arab writer to present the
UNESCO address to the International Institute of Theater on International Theater Day
... that at the time of its construction in 1920, the Howard Theatre in
Atlanta was the second-largest movie theater in the world, with a seating capacity of 2,700?
Selected quote
As far as my work is concerned [the ideal dramatic criticism is] unqualified appreciation.
... that Beerbohm, a cat owned by the
Gielgud Theatre, became famous for entering actors' dressing rooms, attacking props, and wandering across the stage during performances?
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Amédée Forestier - Illustrated London News - Gilbert and Sullivan - Ruddygore (Ruddigore)
Anna Fernqvist, rollporträtt - SMV - H1 122 - Restoration
Annie Oakley shooting glass balls, 1894
Arizona - 1907 poster
Atelier Nadar - Fly scene from Offenbach's Orphée aux enfers with Jeanne Granier as Eurydice and Eugène Vauthier as Jupiter, 1887 revival, wide-angle shot
Atelier Nadar - Galli-Marié in Bizet's Carmen
Atelier Nadar - Jacques Isnardon, Vaudeville
Auguste François-Marie Gorguet - poster for the première performance of Édouard Lalo's Le roi d'Ys (1888)
Barbier, Jules, Nadar, Gallica
Bernhardt Hamlet2
Big White Fog
Bon-Ton Burlesquers2
Boris Kustodiev - Portrait of Fyodor Chaliapin - Google Art Project
Carl Nielsen c. 1908 - Restoration
Carloz Schwabe - Vincent d'Indy's Fervaal
Caroline Hill as Mirza in W. S. Gilbert's The Palace of Truth
Charles Frohman presents William Gillette in his new four act drama, Sherlock Holmes (LOC var 1364) (edit)
Charles Gounod (1890) by Nadar
Charles Motte - Rossini et Georges IV - la soirée de Brighton
Charles-Antoine Cambon - La Esmeralda, Act 3, Scene 2 set
Charles-Antoine Cambon - La Esmeralda, Act III, Scene 1 set design (Version 2)
Charles-Antoine Cambon - Set design for Act V, Scene 2 of Fromental Halévy's La reine de Chypre
Charles-Antoine Cambon - Set design for the première of Rossini's Robert Bruce, Act III, Scene 3
CharltonHestonCivilRightsMarch1963Retouched
Cherubini, Luigi - Medea - Restoration
Chicago Theatre blend
Christine Nilsson Nadar
Cody-Buffalo-Bill-LOC
Colette and Maurice Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges, 1st scene
Colette and Maurice Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges, 2nd scene
Collina presso Nagasaki, bozzetto di Alexandre Bailly, Marcel Jambon per Madama Butterfly (1906) - Archivio Storico Ricordi ICON000079 - Restoration
Colosseum in Rome, Italy - April 2007
Composer Rossini G 1865 by Carjat - Restoration
Célestin Nanteuil - Jules Massenet - Don César de Bazan
Danny Lee Wynter
Donald Pleasence Allan Warren edit
Dudley Hardy - Poster for His Majesty
Elliott & Fry - photograph W. S. Gilbert
Elsie Leslie (1899) by Zaida Ben-Yusuf
Ethel Smyth
Ethel Waters - William P. Gottlieb
Eugène Du Faget - Costume designs for Guillaume Tell - 1-3. Laure Cinti-Damoreau as Mathilde, Adolphe Nourrit as Arnold Melchtal, and Nicolas Levasseur as Walter Furst
Eugène Du Faget - Costume designs for Les Huguenots - 2. Julie Dorus-Gras as Marguerite, Adolphe Nourrit as Raoul, and Cornélie Falcon as Valentine
Eugène Grasset - Jules Massenet - Werther
Eva Le Gallienne (mnwp.275003, cropped restoration)