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 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").

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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Joshua Reynolds's Puck (1789)
The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery was a three-part project initiated in November 1786 by engraver and publisher John Boydell in an effort to foster a school of British history painting. Boydell planned to focus on an illustrated edition of William Shakespeare's plays and a folio of prints, but during the 1790s the London gallery that showed the original paintings emerged as the project's most popular element. Boydell decided to publish a grand illustrated edition of Shakespeare's plays that would showcase the talents of British painters and engravers. He chose the noted scholar and Shakespeare editor George Steevens to oversee the edition, which was released between 1791 and 1803. The press reported weekly on the building of Boydell's gallery, designed by George Dance the Younger, on a site in Pall Mall. Boydell commissioned works from famous painters of the day, such as Joshua Reynolds, and the folio of engravings proved the enterprise's most lasting legacy. However, the long delay in publishing the prints and the illustrated edition prompted criticism. Because they were hurried, and many illustrations had to be done by lesser artists, the final products of Boydell's venture were judged to be disappointing. The project caused the Boydell firm to become insolvent, and they were forced to sell the gallery at a lottery.

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William Wells Brown

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.

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Edward Albee
A play is fiction — and fiction is fact distilled into truth.
Edward Albee, New York Times interview, 1966

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