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

Theda Bara as Ruth Gordon
The Blue Flame is a four-act play written by George V. Hobart and John Willard, who revised an earlier version by Leta Vance Nicholson. In 1920, producer Albert H. Woods staged the play on Broadway and on tour across the United States. Ruth Gordon, the main character, is a religious young woman who dies and is revived by her scientist fiancé as a soulless femme fatale. She seduces several men and involves them in crimes, including drug use and murder. In the final act, her death and resurrection are revealed to be a dream. The production starred Theda Bara (pictured), a popular silent film actress who was known for playing similar roles in movies. Critics panned the play, ridiculing the plot, the dialog, and Bara's acting. Theater historian Ward Morehouse called it "one of the worst plays ever written". Bara's movie fame drew large crowds to theaters, and the play was a commercial success, breaking attendance records at some venues. Ruth Gordon was Bara's only Broadway role, and The Blue Flame was one of her last professional acting projects.

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Featured biography

Henry Edwards
Henry Edwards (1827–1891) was an English-born stage actor, writer and expert in the science of insects who gained fame in Australia, San Francisco, and New York City for his theatre work. Edwards was drawn to the theatre early in life, and he appeared in amateur productions in London. After sailing to Australia, Edwards appeared professionally in Shakespearean plays and light comedies, primarily in Melbourne and Sydney. Throughout his childhood in England and his acting career in Australia, he was greatly interested in collecting insects, and the National Museum of Victoria used the results of his Australian fieldwork as part of the genesis of their collection. After writing a series of influential studies on butterflies and moths on the West Coast of the United States, he was elected a life member of the California Academy of Sciences. Relocating eastward, a brief time spent in Boston theatre led to a connection to Wallack's Theatre and further renown in New York City. There, Edwards edited three volumes of the leading insect journal Papilio and published a major work on the life of the butterfly. His large collection of insect specimens served as the foundation of the American Museum of Natural History's butterfly and moth studies.
  • ... that John Matthews's pension was suspended because he was accused of leading a call for a theatre performance to play "Yankee Doodle" and "Hail, Columbia"?
  • ... that despite having roles in more than 170 films, Josef Somr preferred acting in theatre?
  • ... that English-born actress Frances Brett Hodgkinson became the highest-paid theater actress in the United States in 1800?
  • ... that Kyiv's Molodyy Theatre is located in the same mansion originally occupied by Les Kurbas's first theatre of the same name?
  • ... that at New York City's Apollo Theater, amateurs could be swept off the stage?
  • ... that the studios of a California TV station were converted back into a movie theater after it went out of business?

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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