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Allah jang Palsoe (Malay for The False God) is a 1919 stage drama from the Dutch East Indies that was written by the ethnic Chinese author Kwee Tek Hoay, based on E. Phillips Oppenheim's short story "The False Gods". Over six acts, the Malay-language play follows two brothers, one a devout son who holds firmly to his morals and personal honour, the other a man who worships money and prioritises personal gain. The two learn over the course of a decade that money (the titular false god) is not the path to happiness. Kwee Tek Hoay's first stage play, Allah jang Palsoe was written as a realist response to whimsical contemporary theatre. Though the published stageplay sold poorly and the play was deemed difficult to perform, Allah jang Palsoe found success on the stage. By 1930 it had been performed by various ethnic Chinese troupes to popular acclaim, and had pioneered a body of work by authors such as Lauw Giok Lan, Tio Ie Soei, and Tjoa Tjien Mo. In 2006 the script for the play, which continues to be performed, was republished with updated spelling by the Lontar Foundation.

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• 1 February 1902 – Birth of Langston Hughes, who wrote several plays and founded the Skyloft Players to nurture black playwrights
• 3 February 1869 – Edwin Booth's Booth's Theatre opened with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
• 19 February 1704 – Ichikawa Danjūrō I (pictured), an early and influential kabuki actor, was stabbed and killed onstage by fellow actor Ikushima Hanroku
• 22 February 1972 – Red Detachment of Women, one of the eight model plays, was performed for Richard Nixon during his trip to China
• 24 February 1607 – Premiere of Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, which is the earliest operatic work that is still performed today
• 27 February 1877 – Premiere of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, which received poor reviews
• 28 February 1915 – Birth of Obie and Tony winning actor Zero Mostel
• 29 February 1948 – Birth of writer and director Mamunur Rashid, who won the Bangla Academy Literary Award for drama in 1982

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist, mystic and public figure. Yeats was one of the driving forces behind the Irish Literary Revival and was co-founder of the Abbey Theatre. His early work tended towards a romantic lushness and dreamlike quality best described by the title of his 1893 collection The Celtic Twilight, but in his forties, inspired by his relationships with modernist poets such as Ezra Pound and his active involvement in Irish nationalism, he moved towards a harder, more modern style. As well as his role as member of the board of the Abbey, Yeats served as an Irish Senator. He took his role as a public figure seriously and was a reasonably hard-working member of the Seanad. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923 for what the Nobel Committee described as "his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation".

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• ... that the only death from the Belvidere Apollo Theatre collapse was the one audience member who bought a concert t-shirt from Crypta that night, according to their lead singer?
• ... that actress Klara Höfels, known for her roles in television crime series, also produced, directed, and starred in world premieres of theatre projects in Berlin?
• ... that Isabelle Cals, who turned to singing after a degree in Chinese, appeared as Wagner's Kundry in a production of Parsifal at the Stadttheater Minden?
• ... that Anne Cooke Reid founded the first Black summer theater in the United States?
• ... that at the time of its construction in 1920, the Howard Theatre in Atlanta was the second-largest movie theater in the world, with a seating capacity of 2,700?
• ... that fans of the musical Rent would sleep outside the Nederlander Theatre to get cheap front-row tickets?

If you really want to help the American theater, don't be an actress, darling. Be an audience. — Tallulah Bankhead, 1952

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