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...)

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A male Beijing opera performer
Peking opera (also called Beijing opera) is a form of traditional Chinese theatre which combines music, vocal performance, mime, dance, and acrobatics. It arose in the late 18th century and became fully developed and recognized by the mid-19th century. The form was extremely popular in the Qing dynasty court and has come to be regarded as one of the cultural treasures of China. Major performance troupes are based in Beijing and Tianjin in the north, and Shanghai in the south. The art form is also enjoyed in Taiwan, and has spread to other countries such as the United States and Japan. Beijing opera features four main types of performers. Performing troupes often have several of each variety, as well as numerous secondary and tertiary performers. With their elaborate and colorful costumes, performers are the only focal points on Beijing opera's characteristically sparse stage. They utilize the skills of speech, song, dance, and combat in movements that are symbolic and suggestive, rather than realistic. Above all else, the skill of performers is evaluated according to the beauty of their movements.

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Vivien Leigh
Vivien Leigh was an English theatre and film actress. Although her film appearances were relatively few, she won two Academy Awards playing "Southern belles", Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, a role she had also played in London's West End. She was a prolific stage performer, frequently in collaboration with her husband, Laurence Olivier, who directed her in several of her roles. During her thirty-year stage career, she played parts that ranged from the heroines of Noël Coward and George Bernard Shaw comedies to classic Shakespearean characters such as Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and Lady Macbeth. Lauded for her beauty, Leigh felt that it sometimes prevented her from being taken seriously as an actress, but ill health proved to be her greatest obstacle. Affected by bipolar disorder for most of her adult life, she gained a reputation for being difficult, and her career went through periods of decline. She was further weakened by recurrent bouts of tuberculosis, which was first diagnosed in the mid-1940s. She and Olivier divorced in 1960, and Leigh worked sporadically in film and theatre until her death from tuberculosis.
  • ... that the Mark Hellinger Theatre has been occupied by the Times Square Church since 1989, when its then-owner said the church's five-year lease will "pass before you know it"?
  • ... that the Little Theatre, once deemed a "gem among playhouses", was later planned to be replaced by a driveway for The New York Times?
  • ... that Kyiv's Molodyy Theatre is located in the same mansion originally occupied by Les Kurbas's first theatre of the same name?
  • ... that to make the Belasco Theatre comfortable for performers, David Belasco banned spitting onto the floor?
  • ... that a showing of the 1914 film Lord Chumley on the roof of a New York City theatre was canceled with an on-screen announcement due to its 40-minute runtime?
  • ... that when part of New York City's Hotel Riverview became a theater, some people thought that the hotel's overflowing toilets and leaky ceilings were part of the show there?

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Voltaire
Whoever condemns the theater is an enemy of his country.
Voltaire

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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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