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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Avery Hopwood
The Demi-Virgin is a three-act play written by Avery Hopwood (pictured). Producer Albert H. Woods staged it on Broadway, where it was one of the most successful plays of the 1921–22 season. The play is a bedroom farce about former couple Gloria Graham and Wally Deane, both movie actors, whose marriage was so brief that the press speculated about whether Gloria was still a virgin. Because it contained suggestive dialog and women in the cast wore revealing clothes, the production was considered highly risqué at the time. The script alluded to a contemporary scandal involving actor Fatty Arbuckle, and one scene featured actresses stripping as part of a card game. Reviewers generally panned the play as unfunny and vulgar. A magistrate ruled the play was obscene, and obscenity charges were brought against Woods, but a grand jury declined to indict him. Woods promoted the controversy to increase ticket sales. The play had no long-term literary impact and was never published, but it did stimulate arguments over censorship of theatrical performances.

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William Shakespeare

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Pinter in 2005
Harold Pinter (1930–2008) was a Nobel Prize-winning English playwright and screenwriter, with a career that spanned more than 50 years. His plays include The Birthday Party, The Homecoming and Betrayal, and his screenplays include The Servant, The French Lieutenant's Woman and Sleuth. Pinter appeared as an actor in productions of his own work on radio and film. He also undertook roles in works by other writers. He directed nearly 50 productions for stage, theatre and screen. He was born and raised in Hackney, east London, trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Central School of Speech and Drama, and worked in repertory theatre before achieving success as a writer. In his later years, he was known for his political activism and his opposition to the war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. Pinter's last stage performance was as Krapp in Beckett's play Krapp's Last Tape, for the Royal Court Theatre, in 2006.
  • ... that despite plans to restore the Sam H. Harris Theatre in the 1990s, it became an entrance to a wax museum?
  • ... that critic Jack Anderson described Patricia Bowman as "the first American ballerina to win critical acclaim and wide popularity as a classical and a musical-theater dancer"?
  • ... that the Victory Theatre, the first theater on 42nd Street to show adult movies, later became a children's theater?
  • ... that the RKO Keith's Theater, once described as one of New York City's "great theaters", later stood in ruins and was covered with graffiti?
  • ... that Stephen Colbert initially balked at hosting The Late Show at the Ed Sullivan Theater, but called for the theater's restoration after learning about its neo-Gothic dome?
  • ... that the Little Theatre, once deemed a "gem among playhouses", was later planned to be replaced by a driveway for The New York Times?

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W. Somerset Maugham
The secret of playwriting can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and whenever you can, cut.

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