Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience 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...)
The Restoration spectacular, or elaborately staged "machine play", hit the London public stage in the late 17th-century Restoration period, enthralling audiences with action, music, dance, moveable scenery, baroque illusionistic painting, gorgeous costumes, and special effects such as trapdoor tricks, "flying" actors, and fireworks. These shows have always had a bad reputation as a vulgar and commercial threat to the witty, "legitimate" Restoration drama; however, they drew Londoners in unprecedented numbers and left them dazzled and delighted. Basically home-grown and with roots in the early 17th-century courtmasque, though never ashamed of borrowing ideas and stage technology from French opera, the spectaculars are sometimes called "English opera". The expense of mounting ever more elaborate scenic productions drove the two competing theatre companies into a dangerous spiral of huge expenditure and correspondingly huge losses or profits.
12 April 1937 – Death of Abdülhak Hâmid Tarhan, an early 20th-century Turkish playwright and poet who was one of the leading lights of the Turkish Romantic period
23 April 1616 – Death of William Shakespeare (pictured), often considered the greatest English playwright
Olivia Shakespear (1863–1938) was a British novelist, playwright, and patron of the arts. She wrote six books that are described as "marriage problem" novels. Her works sold poorly, sometimes only a few hundred copies. Her last novel, Uncle Hilary, is considered her best. She wrote two plays in collaboration with Florence Farr. In 1894 her literary interests led to a friendship with William Butler Yeats that became physically intimate in 1896. Following their consummation he declared that they "had many days of happiness" to come, but the affair ended in 1897. They nevertheless remained lifelong friends and corresponded frequently. Yeats went on to marry Georgie Hyde-Lees, Olivia's step-niece and her daughter Dorothy's best friend. Olivia began hosting a weekly salon frequented by Ezra Pound and other modernist writers and artists in 1909, and became influential in London literary society. Dorothy Shakespear married Pound in 1914, despite the less-than-enthusiastic blessing of her parents. After their marriage, Pound would use funds received from Olivia to support T. S. Eliot and James Joyce. When Dorothy gave birth to a son, Omar Pound, in France in 1926, Olivia assumed guardianship of the boy. He lived with Olivia until her death on 3 October 1938.
... that four years after Harry Frazee opened his Longacre Theatre, he sold his ownership stake in the theater to focus on baseball?
... that English-born actress Frances Brett Hodgkinson became the highest-paid theater actress in the United States in 1800?
... that Jochen Schmidt, a dance critic for the FAZ for 30 years, wrote a book about Pina Bausch and her Wuppertal dance theatre?
... that when Hetty Jane Dunaway created Dunaway Gardens near Atlanta, it had a 400- and a 1,000-seat theatre and a swimming pool blasted out with explosives?
... that the Victory Theatre, the first theater on 42nd Street to show adult movies, later became a children's theater?
This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk·contribs) (typically on Saturdays). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged (e.g. {{WikiProject Theatre}}) or categorized correctly and wait for the next update. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.
Amédée Forestier - Illustrated London News - Gilbert and Sullivan - Ruddygore (Ruddigore)
Anna Fernqvist, rollporträtt - SMV - H1 122 - Restoration
Annie Oakley shooting glass balls, 1894
Arizona - 1907 poster
Atelier Nadar - Fly scene from Offenbach's Orphée aux enfers with Jeanne Granier as Eurydice and Eugène Vauthier as Jupiter, 1887 revival, wide-angle shot
Atelier Nadar - Galli-Marié in Bizet's Carmen
Atelier Nadar - Jacques Isnardon, Vaudeville
Auguste François-Marie Gorguet - poster for the première performance of Édouard Lalo's Le roi d'Ys (1888)
Barbier, Jules, Nadar, Gallica
Bernhardt Hamlet2
Big White Fog
Bon-Ton Burlesquers2
Boris Kustodiev - Portrait of Fyodor Chaliapin - Google Art Project
Carl Nielsen c. 1908 - Restoration
Carloz Schwabe - Vincent d'Indy's Fervaal
Caroline Hill as Mirza in W. S. Gilbert's The Palace of Truth
Charles Frohman presents William Gillette in his new four act drama, Sherlock Holmes (LOC var 1364) (edit)
Charles Gounod (1890) by Nadar
Charles Motte - Rossini et Georges IV - la soirée de Brighton
Charles-Antoine Cambon - La Esmeralda, Act 3, Scene 2 set
Charles-Antoine Cambon - La Esmeralda, Act III, Scene 1 set design (Version 2)
Charles-Antoine Cambon - Set design for Act V, Scene 2 of Fromental Halévy's La reine de Chypre
Charles-Antoine Cambon - Set design for the première of Rossini's Robert Bruce, Act III, Scene 3
CharltonHestonCivilRightsMarch1963Retouched
Cherubini, Luigi - Medea - Restoration
Chicago Theatre blend
Christine Nilsson Nadar
Cody-Buffalo-Bill-LOC
Colette and Maurice Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges, 1st scene
Colette and Maurice Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges, 2nd scene
Collina presso Nagasaki, bozzetto di Alexandre Bailly, Marcel Jambon per Madama Butterfly (1906) - Archivio Storico Ricordi ICON000079 - Restoration
Colosseum in Rome, Italy - April 2007
Composer Rossini G 1865 by Carjat - Restoration
Célestin Nanteuil - Jules Massenet - Don César de Bazan
Danny Lee Wynter
Donald Pleasence Allan Warren edit
Dudley Hardy - Poster for His Majesty
Elliott & Fry - photograph W. S. Gilbert
Elsie Leslie (1899) by Zaida Ben-Yusuf
Ethel Smyth
Ethel Waters - William P. Gottlieb
Eugène Du Faget - Costume designs for Guillaume Tell - 1-3. Laure Cinti-Damoreau as Mathilde, Adolphe Nourrit as Arnold Melchtal, and Nicolas Levasseur as Walter Furst
Eugène Du Faget - Costume designs for Les Huguenots - 2. Julie Dorus-Gras as Marguerite, Adolphe Nourrit as Raoul, and Cornélie Falcon as Valentine
Eugène Grasset - Jules Massenet - Werther
Eva Le Gallienne (mnwp.275003, cropped restoration)