Documents for "Theater":

• Abbey Theatre Irish theatrical company devoted primarily to indigenous drama. W. B. Yeats was a leader in founding (1902) the Irish National Theatre Society with Lady Gregory, J. M. Synge, and A. E. (George...

• acting the representation of a usually fictional character on stage or in films. At its highest levels of accomplishment acting involves the employment of technique and/or an imaginative identification...

• Actors' Studio, The see Strasberg, Lee.

• Admiral's Men theatrical company of players, officially designated the Admiral's Men in 1585. They were rivals of the Chamberlain's Men and performed at the theaters of Philip Henslowe. Their leading actor was...

• amusement park a commercially operated park offering various forms of entertainment, such as arcade games, carousels, roller coasters, and performers, as well as food, drink, and souvenirs. Amusement parks differ...

• ballad opera in English drama, a play of comic, satiric, or pastoral intent, interspersed with songs, most of them sung to popular airs. First and best was The Beggar's Opera (1728) by John Gay. The vogue for...

• Bourgogne, Hôtel de see Hôtel de Bourgogne.

• Brooklyn Academy of Music performing arts center located in the borough of Brooklyn, N.Y. and popularly known as BAM. Founded in 1859 and opened in 1861, it is the oldest such institution still in operation in the United...

• burlesque [Ital.,=mockery], form of entertainment differing from comedy or farce in that it achieves its effects through caricature, ridicule, and distortion. It differs from satire in that it is devoid of...

• Chamberlain's Men Elizabethan theatrical company for which Shakespeare, a joint owner of the company, wrote his plays and served as actor. Organized in 1594, they performed at the Globe and at the Blackfriars...

• Chester Plays see miracle play.

• chorus in the drama of ancient Greece. Originally the chorus seems to have arisen from the singing of the dithyramb , and the dithyrambic chorus allegedly became a true dramatic chorus when Thespis in the 6th cent. BC introduced the actor. First the chorus as a participating actor tied the histrionic interludes together; later, as a narrator, it commented on the action and divided it,...

• circus [Lat.,=ring, circle], historically, the arena associated with the horse and chariot races and athletic contests known in ancient Rome as the Circensian games. The Roman circus was a round or oval...

• clown a comic character usually distinguished by garish makeup and costume whose antics are both humorously clumsy and acrobatic. The clown employs a broad, physical style of humor that is wordless or...

• Columbine see commedia dell'arte.

• Comédie Française or Théâtre Français , state theater of France. Also known as La Maison de Molière, it was officially established by Louis XIV in 1680. His decree merged the two French companies of actors at Paris, the troupe of the...

• commedia dell'arte popular form of comedy employing improvised dialogue and masked characters that flourished in Italy from the 16th to the 18th cent.

• court jester see fool.

• Coventry Plays see miracle play.

• Deutsches Theater German private theater organization founded in 1883. Under its first director, Adolph L'Arronge, the Deutsches merged with the Freie Bühne (Otto Brahm, director) and in 1884 built its own house in...

• directing the art of leading dramatic performances on the stage or in films. The modern theatrical director is in complete charge of all the artistic aspects of a dramatic presentation.

• drama, Western plays produced in the Western world. This article discusses the development of Western drama in general; for further information see the various national literature articles. ...

• Drury Lane street and district of London, at first a place of fine residences, among which was that of the Drury family. It was the site of the original Drury Lane Theatre, which was built by Thomas Killigrew in 1663 under a charter from Charles II and called the Theatre Royal. After burning down (1672), the theater was rebuilt (1674) with Christopher Wren as architect. It was again rebuilt (1791-94)...

• epic theater see Brecht, Bertolt ; Piscator, Erwin.

• Federal Theatre (1935-39), branch of the Work Projects Administration designed to provide employment for actors, directors, writers, and scene designers. As well as providing a nationwide audience with inexpensive, high-quality productions, it gave impetus to...

• folk drama noncommercial, generally rural theater and pageantry based on folk traditions and local history. This form of drama, common throughout the world, declined in popularity in the West (although not in...

• fool or court jester, a person who entertains with buffoonery and an often caustic wit. In all countries from ancient times and extending into the 18th cent., mental and physical deformity provided amusement. Attached...

• Globe Theatre London playhouse, built in 1598, where most of Shakespeare's plays were first presented. It burned in 1613, was rebuilt in 1614, and was destroyed by the Puritans in 1644. A working replica opened...

• Group Theatre organization formed in New York City in 1931 by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford, and Lee Strasberg. Its founders, who had worked earlier with the Provincetown Players , wished to revive and redefine American theater by establishing a permanent company to present contemporary plays of social significance and by developing the theaterical arts, in particular, that...

• Hôtel de Bourgogne first theater in Paris. It was built in 1548 by the Confraternity of the Passion, the Paris actors' monopoly. Its first days were marred by a ban on the presentation of religious dramas. The...

• Habima Theater [Heb.,=the stage], the national theater of Israel. Founded in 1917 in Moscow by Nahum Zemach and at first affiliated with the Moscow Art Theatre, it was one of the first Hebrew-language theaters...

• happening an artistic event of a theatrical nature, but usually improvised spontaneously without the framework of a plot. The term originated with the creation and performance in 1959 of Allan Kaprow's "18 Happenings in 6 Parts." This work emphasized various sorts of performances and experiences, including slide projection, dance, and taste and odor sensations. Many examples of the genre required audience participation, and...

• Harlequin see commedia dell'arte.

• interlude development in the late 15th cent. of the English medieval morality play. Played between the acts of a long play, the interlude, treating intellectual rather than moral topics, often contained...

• jongleurs itinerant entertainers of the Middle Ages in France and Norman England. Their repertoire included dancing, conjuring, acrobatics, the feats of the modern juggler, singing, and storytelling. Many...

• Living Theater see drama, Western ; Beck, Julian.

• magic in entertainment, the seeming manipulation and supernatural control of the natural world for the amusement and amazement of an audience. Entertainment magic can be divided into four main...

• marionette see puppet.

• masque courtly form of dramatic spectacle, popular in England in the first half of the 17th cent. The masque developed from the early 16th-century disguising, or mummery, in which disguised guests bearing...

• Meiningen Players German theatrical company that toured Europe from 1874 to 1890. The group, inspiring theatrical reforms wherever it performed, was a major influence in the movement toward modern theater. George...

• mime see pantomime.

• minstrel show stage entertainment by white performers made up as blacks. Thomas Dartmouth Rice, who gave (c.1828) the first solo performance in blackface and introduced the song-and-dance act Jim Crow, is called the "father of American minstrelsy." The first public performance of a minstrel show was given in 1843 by the Virginia Minstrels, headed by Daniel Decatur Emmett. Christy's Minstrels (for whom Stephen Foster wrote some of his most popular songs) appeared in 1846, headed by Edwin P. Christy. In the first part of the minstrel show the company, in blackface and gaudy costumes, paraded to chairs placed in a semicircle on the stage. The interlocutor then cracked jokes with the end men,...

• miracle play or mystery play, form of medieval drama that came from dramatization of the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church. It developed from the 10th to the 16th cent., reaching its height in the 15th cent. The simple lyric...

• morality play form of medieval drama that developed in the late 14th cent. and flourished through the 16th cent. The characters in the morality were personifications of good and evil usually involved in a...

• Moscow Art Theater Russian repertory company founded in 1897 by Constantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. Its work created new concepts of theatrical production and marked the beginning of modern theater. Rebelling against the highly stylized theater of the 19th cent., the founders set out to create...

• mumming play form of drama developed in England in the early 17th cent., based on the legend of St. George and the dragon. The central theme of the play is the death and resurrection of the hero. The mumming...

• music hall In England, the Licensing Act of 1737 confined the production of legitimate plays to the two royal theaters—Drury Lane and Covent Garden; the demands for entertainment of the rising lower and...

• musical comedy see musicals.

• musicals earlier known as musical comedy, plays that incorporate music, song, and dance. These elements move with the plot, heightening and commenting on the action.

• mystery play see miracle play.

• National Theatre of Great Britain see Royal National Theatre.

• Old Vic London repertory company and theater. The Old Vic theater opened in 1818 as the Coburg, and was renamed the Royal Victoria in 1833, soon familiarized to the Old Vic. In 1914 it became a Shakespearean repertory company organized by Lillian Baylis; by 1923 the entire stage works of Shakespeare had been presented. After...

• pageant modern dramatic spectacle or procession celebrating a special occasion or an event in the history of a locality. In medieval times the word pageant had meant the wagon or the movable stage on which one scene of a mystery or miracle play was performed. The pageant was built on wheels and consisted of two rooms, the lower one being used as a dressing room and the upper used as a stage. The word also referred to the complex wooden...

• Pantaloon see commedia dell'arte.

• pantomime or mime [Gr.,=all in mimic], silent form of the drama in which the story is developed by movement, gesture, facial expression, and stage properties. It is known to have existed among the Chinese, Persians,...

• Passion play genre of the miracle play that has survived from the Middle Ages into modern times. Its subject is the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Passion plays were first given in Latin. By the 13th cent. they included...

• Pierrot [Fr.,=little Peter], character in French pantomime. A buffoon, he wore a loose white tunic with big buttons, balloon sleeves, and white pantaloons. His face was painted white. A creation of...

• Provincetown Players American theatrical company that first introduced the plays of Eugene O'Neill. The company opened with his Bound East for Cardiff at the Wharf Theatre, Provincetown, on Cape Cod in 1916 and later worked in New York City in conjunction with the Greenwich Village Theatre under the auspices of Robert Edmond Jones , Kenneth Macgowan, and O'Neill. By producing plays that were generally considered noncommercial, the company gave unrecognized dramatists the opportunity to experiment with new ideas. The group...

• Punch and Judy famous English puppet play, very popular with children and given widely by strolling puppet players, especially during the Christmas season. It came to England in the 17th cent. by way of France...

• puppet human or animal figure, generally of a small size and performing on a miniature stage, manipulated by an unseen operator who usually speaks the dialogue. A distinction is made between marionettes,...

• revue a stage presentation that originated in the early 19th cent. as a light, satirical commentary on current events. It was rapidly developed, particularly in England and the United States, into an...

• Royal National Theatre a government-funded repertory company based in London. Although the idea for such a company originated in the 19th cent., the National Theatre was not finally established until 1963, with Laurence Olivier appointed as director. Temporarily housed at first in the Old Vic theater, the company opened with Hamlet in 1963. Peter Hall took over the directorship in 1973, and the National Theatre complex opened in 1976-77 in its new building on the south bank of the Thames. In 1988 the name of the company was...

• Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), a British repertory theater. The company, established in 1960, was based on the earlier Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon. It is a national theater supported by government...

• Savoy Theatre see Savoy, the.

• Scaramouche see commedia dell'arte.

• scene design and stage lighting settings and illumination designed for theatrical productions.

• showboat In the early 19th cent. entertainment was brought by boat to the pioneers that settled along the western rivers (especially the Mississippi and Ohio) of the United States. At first companies only...

• stage lighting and stage setting: see scene design and stage lighting.

• Théâtre Français see Comédie Française.

• Théâtre Libre French theatrical company founded in Paris in 1887 by André Antoine. Inspired by the work of the Meiningen Players , Antoine's theater became a showcase for naturalist drama. Plays of Zola, Becque, Brieux, and of contemporary German, Scandinavian, and Russian masters were produced. The Théâtre Libre became a...

• theater building, structure, or space in which dramatic performances take place. In its broadest sense theater can be defined as including everything connected with dramatic art—the play itself, the stage...

• theater of the absurd see drama, Western.

• theater-in-the-round see theater.

• Towneley Plays a cycle of 32 plays preserved in a manuscript of c.1460 by the Towneleys, a Lancashire family. Intended for production by the guilds of Wakefield, they are sometimes called the Wakefield Plays. The...

• vaudeville originally a light song, derived from the drinking and love songs formerly attributed to Olivier Basselin and called Vau, or Vaux, de Vire. Similar to the English music hall , American vaudeville was a live entertainment consisting of unrelated songs, dances, acrobatic and magic acts, and humorous skits and sketches by a variety of performers and acts, each on stage for...

• ventriloquism see puppet.

• Wakefield Plays see Towneley Plays ; miracle plays.

• York Plays see miracle play.