Portal:Theatre

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...)

• ...that the Bardavon 1869 Opera House in Poughkeepsie (pictured) is the oldest continuously operating theater in New York State?
• ...that Elvira Popescu, an actress, theatre director, and recipient of the Légion d'honneur, was one of four women who inspired Henri Matisse's painting La Blouse Roumaine?
• ...that the modern meaning of "ballad", a slow, sentimental tune or love song, often written in a fairly standardized form, came about from Tin Pan Alley and Broadway composers?