Jump to content

Portal:Theatre

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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

Dancers from 1913 production of The Rite of Spring
The Rite of Spring is a ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company, with choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky and stage designs and costumes by Nicholas Roerich (pictured). The ballet caused a near-riot in the audience when first performed, on 29 May 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, but rapidly achieved success as a concert piece and later became recognised as one of the most influential musical works of the 20th century. The score has many novel features, including experiments in tonality, metre, rhythm, stress and dissonance. The scenario is the celebration of spring by various primitive rituals, at the end of which a sacrificial victim dances herself to death. After its explosive premiere the ballet was not performed until the 1920s, when Léonide Massine's rechoreographed version was the first of many innovative productions directed by the world's leading ballet-masters. Providing "endless stimulation for performers and listeners" alike, The Rite is among the most recorded works in the classical repertoire.

In this month

Globe Theatre

Olivia Shakespear from Literary Yearbook 1897
Olivia Shakespear (1863–1938) was a British novelist, playwright, and patron of the arts. She wrote six books that are described as "marriage problem" novels. Her works sold poorly, sometimes only a few hundred copies. Her last novel, Uncle Hilary, is considered her best. She wrote two plays in collaboration with Florence Farr. In 1894 her literary interests led to a friendship with William Butler Yeats that became physically intimate in 1896. Following their consummation he declared that they "had many days of happiness" to come, but the affair ended in 1897. They nevertheless remained lifelong friends and corresponded frequently. Yeats went on to marry Georgie Hyde-Lees, Olivia's step-niece and her daughter Dorothy's best friend. Olivia began hosting a weekly salon frequented by Ezra Pound and other modernist writers and artists in 1909, and became influential in London literary society. Dorothy Shakespear married Pound in 1914, despite the less-than-enthusiastic blessing of her parents. After their marriage, Pound would use funds received from Olivia to support T. S. Eliot and James Joyce. When Dorothy gave birth to a son, Omar Pound, in France in 1926, Olivia assumed guardianship of the boy. He lived with Olivia until her death on 3 October 1938.

Selected quote

George Bernard Shaw
In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.

WikiProjects

More did you know

Mary Saunderson

Topics

Recognized content

Extended content

Good articles

Good topics


Categories

Category puzzle
Category puzzle
Select [►] to view subcategories

Things you can do

Things you can do

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Discover Wikipedia using portals