Portal:Theatre

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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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Flyer for the Broadway production
Night of January 16th is a play by Russian-American author Ayn Rand, inspired by the death of Ivar Kreuger, an industrialist and accused swindler known as the Match King. The play is set in a courtroom during a murder trial, and members of the audience are chosen to play the jury. The court hears the case of Karen Andre, a former secretary and lover of businessman Bjorn Faulkner, of whose murder she is accused. The jury must rely on character testimony to decide whether Andre is guilty; the play's ending depends on their verdict. Rand wanted to dramatize a conflict between individualism and conformity. The play was first produced in 1934 in Los Angeles under the title Woman on Trial. Producer Al Woods took it to Broadway for the 1935–36 season and re-titled it Night of January 16th. It became a hit and ran for seven months. The play has been adapted as a movie, as well as for television and radio. Rand had many disputes with Woods over the play, and in 1968 re-edited it for publication as her "definitive" version.

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William Shakespeare

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The Chandos portrait of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, now widely regarded as the greatest writer of the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, producing plays, such as Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime; and in 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's. Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day; but his reputation would not rise to its present heights until the nineteenth century.

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Sacha Guitry, portrait by Léon Gard
When they have a success, the producers think they are brilliant, but when they have a failure, they think the public are fools.

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