Concept
Theatre
Overview
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors, 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").
Modern Western theatre comes, in large measure, from the theatre of ancient Greece, from which it borrows technical terminology, classification into genres, and many of its themes, stock characters, and plot elements. Theatre artist Patrice Pavis defines theatricality, theatrical language, stage writing and the specificity of theatre as synonymous expressions that differentiate theatre from the other performing arts, literature and the arts in general.
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.
Modern theatre includes performances of plays and musical theatre. The art forms of ballet and opera are also theatre and use many conventions such as acting, costumes and staging. They were influential in the development of musical theatre.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Theatre is discussed.
In order then to found the German Theatre on true German soil, it was Schiller’s intention to revise Klopstock’s _Hermanns Schlacht_. The play was taken up, but the first consideration of it produced much doubt in his mind. Schiller’s judgment was in general very liberal, but at the same time independent and critical.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethe's literary essays
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; opens on it
An incident occurred in the theatre, during his consulship, which showed what his speaking could do. Formerly the knights of Rome were mingled in the theatre with the common people, and took their places amongst them just as it happened; but when Marcus Otho became praetor he distinguished them from the other citizens, and appointed them special seats, which they still enjoy as their place in the theatre. This the…
Plutarch, The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch
names the idea
Since, as I said before, the curtain did not fall between the acts, two others, while music struck up, relieved guard, by coming from the wings, directly in front of the first, who retired in the same measured manner. Now, if such a practice was well fitted to destroy all that in the theatre is called illusion, this is the more striking, because it was done at a time when, according to Diderot's principles and…
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Autobiography of Goethe Truth and Poetry
states what it is; names the idea
We left them to lie in the shade of the Theatre tent and we went with International 4-8818 to finish our work. We came together to the great ravine behind the Theatre. It is empty save for trees and weeds. Beyond the ravine there is a plain, and beyond the plain there lies the Uncharted Forest, about which men must not think.
Ayn Rand, Anthem
names the idea; opens on it
And _those_ as a means to this end! And theatre and music the hashish-smoking and betel-chewing of Europeans! Oh, who will narrate to us the whole history of narcotics!—It is almost the history of "culture," the so-called higher culture!
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom
names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Theatre
Related ideas
- Expressionism
- Aristophanes
- Ritual
- Symposium (ancient Greece)
- German language
- Grammar
- Polis
- Classical Athens
- Hamlet
- History of literature
- High culture
- Italy
- India
- Indonesia
- Ancient Greek
- Industrial Revolution
- Vedas
- Dialogue
- Ancient Greek philosophy
- Trade union
- Livy
- Latin literature
- Neoclassicism
- Christians
Place in the tradition
Part of Aesthetics.