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 in the Japanese theatrical art known as Taishū engeki (pictured), it is not uncommon for fans to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of yen on gifts for the performers?
• ...that Norway's first regional theatre, the Hålogaland Teater, used to be housed in a disused margarine factory in the Arctic Circle town of Tromsø?
• ... that Thomas Middleton's 1624 play A Game at Chess was considered so scandalous that the Globe Theatre was closed and the actors and author were put on trial?