Theatre (sometimes theater in American English) is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance. Elements of design and stagecraft are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. The specific place of the performance is also named by the word "theatre" as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, “a place for viewing”) and θεάομαι (theáomai, “to see", "to watch", "to observe”).
Modern Western theatre derives in large measure from ancient Greek drama, from which it borrows technical terminology, classification into genres, and many of its themes, stock characters, and plot elements. Theatre scholar Patrice Pavis defines theatricality, theatrical language, stage writing, and the specificity of theatre as synonymous expressions that differentiate theatre from the other performing arts, literature, and the arts in general.
Theatre today includes performances of plays and musicals. Although it can be defined broadly to include opera and ballet, those art forms are outside the scope of this article.
Read more about Theatre: History, Theories of Theatre, Technical Aspects of Theatre, Theatre Organization and Administration
Famous quotes containing the word theatre:
“If an irreducible distinction between theatre and cinema does exist, it may be this: Theatre is confined to a logical or continuous use of space. Cinema ... has access to an alogical or discontinuous use of space.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“This visible world is wonderfully to be delighted in, and highly to be esteemed, because it is the theatre of Gods righteous Kingdom.”
—Thomas Traherne (16361674)
“Art is for [the Irish] inseparable from artifice: of that, the theatre is the home. Possibly, it was England made me a novelist.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (18991973)