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 Danny Kaye, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Abbott and Costello and Sammy Davis Jr. are among the performers to have graced the stage of the Howard Theatre (pictured) in Washington, D.C.?
• ...that the rise of ticket prices in the new Covent Garden Theatre led to the so-called Old Price Riots, which lasted for more than two months in 1809?
• ...that by 1608, performances of William Shakespeare's plays had become popular enough that his playing company was able to act indoors, in the Blackfriars Theatre?