Portal:Theatre

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...)

• ...that scholars of Japanese theatre have been able to identify the subjects of many yakusha-e (ukiyo-e actor prints, pictured) down to not only the kabuki actors, roles, and the play depicted, but even the theater and month in which it was performed?
• ...that in 1960 the American Ballet Theatre became the first American ballet company to perform in the Soviet Union?
• ...that script breakdowns are the intermediate step between script and production in theater, film, television and comic books?