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Theatre

Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet, in 1899

Theatre or theater[1] is a collaborative form of fine art that useslive performers to present the experience of a real or imaginedevent before a live audience in a specific place. The performersmay communicate this experience to the audience throughcombinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. Elementsof design and stagecraft are used to enhance the physicality,presence and immediacy of the experience.[2] The specific place ofthe performance is also named by the word "theatre" as derivedfrom the Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, “a place for viewing”),itself from θεάομαι (theáomai, “to see", "to watch", "to observe”).

Modern Western theatre derives in large measure from ancientGreek drama, from which it borrows technical terminology,classification into genres, and many of its themes, stockcharacters, and plot elements. Theatre scholar Patrice Pavisdefines theatricality, theatrical language, stage writing, and thespecificity of theatre as synonymous expressions that differentiatetheatre from the other performing arts, literature, and the arts ingeneral.[3]

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.

History

Classical and Hellenistic Greece

A master (right) and his slave (left) in a Greek phlyaxplay, circa 350/340 BCE.

The city-state of Athens is where western theatre originated.[4] Itwas part of a broader culture of theatricality and performance inclassical Greece that included festivals, religious rituals, politics,law, athletics and gymnastics, music, poetry, weddings, funerals,and symposia.[5] Participation in the city-state's manyfestivals—and attendance at the City Dionysia as an audiencemember (or even as a participant in the theatrical productions) inparticular—was an important part of citizenship.[6] Civicparticipation also involved the evaluation of the rhetoric oforators evidenced in performances in the law-court or politicalassembly, both of which were understood as analogous to thetheatre and increasingly came to absorb its dramaticvocabulary.[7] The Greeks also developed the concepts ofdramatic criticism, acting as a career, and theatre architecture.[8]

The theatre of ancient Greece consisted of three types of drama:tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play.[9] The origins of theatre inancient Greece, according to Aristotle (384–322BC), the first

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theoretician of theatre, are to be found in the festivals that honoured Dionysus.The performances were given insemi-circular auditoria cut into hillsides, capable of seating 10,000–20,000 people. The stage consisted of a dancingfloor (orchestra), dressing room and scene-building area (skene). Since the words were the most important part, goodacoustics and clear delivery were paramount. The actors (always men) wore masks appropriate to the characters theyrepresented, and each might play several parts. Athenian tragedy—the oldest surviving form of tragedy—is a type ofdance-drama that formed an important part of the theatrical culture of the city-state.[10] Having emerged sometimeduring the 6th century BCE, it flowered during the 5th century BCE (from the end of which it began to spreadthroughout the Greek world), and continued to be popular until the beginning of the Hellenistic period.[11] Notragedies from the 6th century BCE and only 32 of the more than a thousand that were performed in during the 5thcentury BCE have survived.[12] We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.[13] Theorigins of tragedy remain obscure, though by the 5th century BCE it was institution alised in competitions (agon)held as part of festivities celebrating Dionysos (the god of wine and fertility).[14] As contestants in the CityDionysia's competition (the most prestigious of the festivals to stage drama) playwrights were required to present atetralogy of plays (though the individual works were not necessarily connected by story or theme), which usuallyconsisted of three tragedies and one satyr play.[15] The performance of tragedies at the City Dionysia may havebegun as early as 534 BCE; official records (didaskaliai) begin from 501 BCE, when the satyr play wasintroduced.[16] Most Athenian tragedies dramatise events from Greek mythology, though The Persians—whichstages the Persian response to news of their military defeat at the Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE—is the notableexception in the surviving drama.[17] When Aeschylus won first prize for it at the City Dionysia in 472 BCE, he hadbeen writing tragedies for more than 25 years, yet its tragic treatment of recent history is the earliest example ofdrama to survive.[18] More than 130 years later, the philosopher Aristotle analysed 5th-century Athenian tragedy inthe oldest surviving work of dramatic theory—his Poetics (c. 335 BCE).Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods, "Old Comedy", "Middle Comedy", and "NewComedy". Old Comedy survives today largely in the form of the eleven surviving plays of Aristophanes, whileMiddle Comedy is largely lost (preserved only in relatively short fragments in authors such as Athenaeus ofNaucratis). New Comedy is known primarily from the substantial papyrus fragments of Menander. Aristotle definedcomedy as a representation of laughable people that involves some kind of blunder or ugliness that does not causepain or disaster.[19]

Roman theatre

Mosaic depicting masked actors in a play: twowomen consult a "witch".

Western theatre developed and expanded considerably under theRomans. The Roman historian Livy wrote that the Romans firstexperienced theatre in the 4th century BCE, with a performance byEtruscan actors.[20] Beacham argues that they had been familiar with"pre-theatrical practices" for some time before that recordedcontact.[21] The theatre of ancient Rome was a thriving and diverse artform, ranging from festival performances of street theatre, nudedancing, and acrobatics, to the staging of Plautus's broadly appealingsituation comedies, to the high-style, verbally elaborate tragedies ofSeneca. Although Rome had a native tradition of performance, theHellenization of Roman culture in the 3rd century BCE had a profoundand energizing effect on Roman theatre and encouraged thedevelopment of Latin literature of the highest quality for the stage.The only surviving Roman tragedies, indeed theonly plays of any kind from the Roman Empire, are ten dramas- nine of them pallilara- attributed to Lucuis AnnaeusSeneca (4 b.c.-65 a.d.), the Corduba-born Stoic philosopher and tutor of Nero.[22]

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Post-classical theatre in the WestTheatre took on many alternate forms in the West between the 15th and 19th centuries, including commedia dell'arteand melodrama. The general trend was away from the poetic drama of the Greeks and the Renaissance and toward amore naturalistic prose style of dialogue, especially following the Industrial Revolution.[23]

Theatre took a big pause during 1642 and 1660 in England because of Cromwell’s Interregnum. Theatre was seen assomething sinful and the Puritans tried very hard to drive it out of their society. Because of this stagnant period, onceCharles II came back to the throne in 1660 in the Restoration, theatre (among other arts) exploded because of a lot ofinfluence from France, where Charles was in exile the years previous to his reign.One of the big changes was the new theatre house. Instead of the types in the Elizabethan era that were like theGlobe, round with no place for the actors to really prep for the next act and with no “theater manners,” it transformedinto a place of refinement, with a stage in front and somewhat stadium seating in front of it. This way, seating wasmore prioritized because some seats were obviously better than others because the seating was no longer all the wayaround the stage. The king would have the best seat in the house: the very middle of the theatre, which got the widestview of the stage as well as the best way to see the point of view and vanishing point that the stage was constructedaround. Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg was one of the most influential set designers of the time because of hisuse of floor space and scenery.Because of the turmoil before this time, there was still some controversy about what should and should not be put onthe stage. Jeremy Collier, a preacher, was one of the heads in this movement through his piece A Short View of theImmorality and Profaneness of the English Stage. The beliefs in this paper were mainly held by non-theatre goersand the remainder of the Puritans and very religious of the time. The main question was if seeing something immoralon stage effects behavior in the lives of those who watch it, a controversy that is still playing out today.The eighteenth century also introduced women to the stage, which would have been extremely inappropriate before.These women were looked at as celebrities (also a newer concept, thanks to some ideas on individualism that werebeginning to be born in Renaissance Humanism) but on the other hand, it was still very new and revolutionary thatthey were on the stage and some said they were unladylike and looked down on. Charless II did not like young menplaying the parts of young women, so he asked that women play their own parts. Because women were allowed onthe stage, playwrights had more leeway with plot twists like dressing them up as men and narrow escapes of morallysticky situations as forms of comedy.Comedies were full of the young and very much in vogue, with the storyline following their love lives: commonly ayoung roguish hero professing his love to the chaste and free minded heroine near the end of the play, much likeSheridan's School for Scandal. Many of the comedies were fashioned after the French tradition, mainly Molière,again hailing back to the French influence brought back by the King and the Royals after their exile. Molière wasone of the top comedic playwrights of the time, revolutionizing the way comedy was written and performed bycombining Commedia dell'arte, French comedy and satire to create some of the longest lasting and most influentialsatiric comedies. Tragedies were similarly victorious in their sense of righting political power, especially poignantbecause of the recent Restoration to the Crown. They were also imitations of French tragedy, although the Frenchhad a larger distinction between comedy and tragedy, whereas the English fudged the lines occasionally and putsome comedic parts in their tragedies. Common forms of non-comedic plays were sentimental comedies as well assomething that would later be called tragedie bourgeoise, the tragedy of common life, were more popular in Englandbecause they applied more to the English sensibilities.Through the 19th century, the popular theatrical forms of Romanticism, melodrama, Victorian burlesque and thewell-made plays of Scribe and Sardou gave way to the problem plays of Naturalism and Realism; the farces ofFeydeau; Wagner's operatic Gesamtkunstwerk; musical theatre (including Gilbert and Sullivan's operas); F. C.Burnand's, W. S. Gilbert's and Wilde's drawing-room comedies; Symbolism; proto-Expressionism in the late worksof August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen;[24] and Edwardian musical comedy.

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These trends continued through the 20th century in the realism of Stanislavski and Lee Strasberg, the political theatreof Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht, the so-called Theatre of the Absurd of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco,American and British musicals, the collective creations of companies of actors and directors such as JoanLittlewood's Theatre Workshop, experimental and postmodern theatre of Robert Wilson and Robert Lepage, thepostcolonial theatre of August Wilson or Tomson Highway, and Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed.

Eastern theatrical traditions

Rakshasa or the demon as depicted inYakshagana, a form of musical dance-drama from

India.

The first form of Indian theatre was the Sanskrit theatre.[25] It beganafter the development of Greek and Roman theatre and before thedevelopment of theatre in other parts of Asia. It emerged sometimebetween the 2nd century BCE and the 1st century CE and flourishedbetween the 1st century CE and the 10th, which was a period ofrelative peace in the history of India during which hundreds of playswere written.[26] Japanese forms of Kabuki, Nō, and Kyōgendeveloped in the 17th century CE.[27] Theatre in the medieval Islamicworld included puppet theatre (which included hand puppets, shadowplays and marionette productions) and live passion plays known asta'ziya, where actors re-enact episodes from Muslim history. Inparticular, Shia Islamic plays revolved around the shaheed(martyrdom) of Ali's sons Hasan ibn Ali and Husayn ibn Ali. Secularplays were known as akhraja, recorded in medieval adab literature,though they were less common than puppetry and ta'ziya theatre.[28]

Types

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance.[29] The term comes from a Greek word meaning"action", which is derived from the verb δράω, dráō, "to do" or "to act". The enactment of drama in theatre,performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collectiveform of reception. The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by thiscollaborative production and collective reception.[30] The early modern tragedy Hamlet (1601) by Shakespeare andthe classical Athenian tragedy Oedipus the King (c. 429 BCE) by Sophocles are among the masterpieces of the art ofdrama.[31] A modern example is Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill (1956).[32]

Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyricalmodes ever since Aristotle's Poetics (c. 335 BCE)—the earliest work of dramatic theory.[33] The use of "drama" inthe narrow sense to designate a specific type of play dates from the 19th century. Drama in this sense refers to a playthat is neither a comedy nor a tragedy—for example, Zola's Thérèse Raquin (1873) or Chekhov's Ivanov (1887). InAncient Greece however, the word drama encompassed all theatrical plays, tragic, comic, or anything in between.Drama is often combined with music and dance: the drama in opera is generally sung throughout; musicals generallyinclude both spoken dialogue and songs; and some forms of drama have incidental music or musical accompanimentunderscoring the dialogue (melodrama and Japanese Nō, for example).[34] In certain periods of history (the ancientRoman and modern Romantic) some dramas have been written to be read rather than performed.[35] Inimprovisation, the drama does not pre-exist the moment of performance; performers devise a dramatic scriptspontaneously before an audience.[36]

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Musical theatreMusic and theatre have had a close relationship since ancient times—Athenian tragedy, for example, was a form ofdance-drama that employed a chorus whose parts were sung (to the accompaniment of an aulos—an instrumentcomparable to the modern clarinet), as were some of the actors' responses and their 'solo songs' (monodies).[37]

Modern musical theatre is a form of theatre that also combines music, spoken dialogue, and dance. It emerged fromcomic opera (especially Gilbert and Sullivan), variety, vaudeville, and music hall genres of the late 19th and early20th century.[38] After the Edwardian musical comedy that began in the 1890s, the Princess Theatre musicals of theearly 20th century, and comedies in the 1920s and 1930s (such as the works of Rodgers and Hammerstein), withOklahoma! (1943), musicals moved in a more dramatic direction.[39] Famous musicals over the subsequent decadesincluded My Fair Lady (1956), West Side Story (1957), The Fantasticks (1960), Hair (1967), A Chorus Line (1975),Les Misérables (1980) and The Phantom of the Opera (1986), as well as more contemporary hits including Rent(1994), The Lion King (1997) and Wicked (2003).Musical theatre may be produced on an intimate scale Off-Broadway, in regional theatres, and elsewhere, but it oftenincludes spectacle. For instance, Broadway and West End musicals often include lavish costumes and sets supportedby multi-million dollar budgets.

Comedy

Theatrical masks of Tragedy and Comedy.Mosaic, Roman artwork, 2nd century CE.

Theatre productions that use humour as a vehicle to tell a story qualifyas comedies. This may include a modern farce such as Boeing Boeingor a classical play such as As You Like It. Theatre expressing bleak,controversial or taboo subject matter in a deliberately humorous way isreferred to as black comedy.

Tragedy

Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious,complete, and of a certain magnitude;in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, theseveral kinds being found in separate parts of the play;in the form of action, not of narrative;through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.—Aristotle, Poetics[40]

Aristotle's phrase "several kinds being found in separate parts of the play" is a reference to the structural origins ofdrama. In it the spoken parts were written in the Attic dialect whereas the choral (recited or sung) ones in the Doricdialect, these discrepancies reflecting the differing religious origins and poetic metres of the parts that were fusedinto a new entity, the theatrical drama.Tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilisation.[41] That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it.[42]

From its obscure origins in the theatres of Athens 2,500 years ago, from which there survives only a fraction of the work of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, through its singular articulations in the works of Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Racine, and Schiller, to the more recent naturalistic tragedy of Strindberg, Beckett's modernist meditations on death, loss and suffering, and Müller's postmodernist reworkings of the tragic canon, tragedy has remained an important site of cultural experimentation, negotiation, struggle, and change.[43] In the wake of Aristotle's Poetics

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(335 BCE), tragedy has been used to make genre distinctions, whether at the scale of poetry in general (where thetragic divides against epic and lyric) or at the scale of the drama (where tragedy is opposed to comedy). In themodern era, tragedy has also been defined against drama, melodrama, the tragicomic, and epic theatre.[44]

ImprovisationImprovisation has been a consistent feature of theatre, with the Commedia dell'arte in the sixteenth century beingrecognised as the first improvisation form. Popularized by Nobel Prize Winner Dario Fo and troupes such as theUpright Citizens Brigade improvisational theatre continues to evolve with many different streams and philosophies.Keith Johnstone and Viola Spolin are recognized as the first teachers of improvisation in modern times, withJohnstone exploring improvisation as an alternative to scripted theatre and the American Spolin and her successorsexploring improvisation principally as a tool for developing dramatic work or skills or as a form for situationalcomedy.

Theories of theatre

Village feast with theatre performance circa 1600.

Having been an important part of human culture for more than 2,500years, theatre has evolved a wide range of different theories andpractices. Some are related to political or spiritual ideologies, whileothers are based purely on "artistic" concerns. Some processes focus ona story, some on theatre as event, and some on theatre as catalyst forsocial change. The classical Greek philosopher Aristotle's Poetics (c.335 BCE) is the earliest-surviving example and its arguments haveinfluenced theories of theatre ever since.[45] In it, he offers an accountof what he calls "poetry" (a term which in Greek literally means"making" and in this context includes drama—comedy, tragedy, andthe satyr play—as well as lyric poetry, epic poetry, and the dithyramb).He examines its "first principles" and identifies its genres and basic elements; his analysis of tragedy constitutes thecore of the discussion.[46] He argues that tragedy consists of six qualitative parts, which are (in order of importance)mythos or "plot", ethos or "character", dianoia or "thought", lexis or "diction", melos or "song", and opsis or"spectacle".[47] "Although Aristotle's Poetics is universally acknowledged in the Western critical tradition," MarvinCarlson explains, "almost every detail about his seminal work has aroused divergent opinions."[48] Important theatrepractitioners of the 20th century include Konstantin Stanislavski, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Jacques Copeau, EdwardGordon Craig, Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski, Augusto Boal,Eugenio Barba, Dario Fo, Keith Johnstone and Robert Wilson (director).

Stanislavski treated the theatre as an art-form that is autonomous from literature and one in which the playwright'scontribution should be respected as that of only one of an ensemble of creative artists.[49] His innovative contributionto modern acting theory has remained at the core of mainstream western performance training for much of the lastcentury.[50] That many of the precepts of his 'system' of actor training seem to be common sense and self-evidenttestifies to its hegemonic success.[51] Actors frequently employ his basic concepts without knowing they do so.Thanks to its promotion and elaboration by acting teachers who were former students and the many translations ofhis theoretical writings, Stanislavski's 'system' acquired an unprecedented ability to cross cultural boundaries anddeveloped an international reach, dominating debates about acting in Europe and the United States.[52] Many actorsroutinely equate his 'system' with the North American Method, although the latter's exclusively psychologicaltechniques contrast sharply with Stanislavski's multivariant, holistic and psychophysical approach, which explorescharacter and action both from the 'inside out' and the 'outside in' and treats the actor's mind and body as parts of acontinuum.[53]

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Technical aspects of theatre

A theater stage building

Theatre presupposes collaborativemodes of production and a collectiveform of reception. The structure ofdramatic texts, unlike other forms ofliterature, is directly influenced by thiscollaborative production and collectivereception. The production of playsusually involves contributions from aplaywright, director, a cast of actors,and a technical production team thatincludes a scenic or set designer,lighting designer, costume designer,sound designer, stage manager, andproduction manager. Depending on theproduction, this team may also includea composer, dramaturg, video designer or fight director.

Stagecraft is a generic term referring to the technical aspects of theatrical, film, and video production. It includes, butis not limited to, constructing and rigging scenery, hanging and focusing of lighting, design and procurement ofcostumes, makeup, procurement of props, stage management, and recording and mixing of sound. Stagecraft isdistinct from the wider umbrella term of scenography. Considered a technical rather than an artistic field, it relatesprimarily to the practical implementation of a designer's artistic vision. In its most basic form, stagecraft is managedby a single person (often the stage manager of a smaller production) who arranges all scenery, costumes, lighting,and sound, and organizes the cast. At a more professional level, for example modern Broadway houses, stagecraft ismanaged by hundreds of skilled carpenters, painters, electricians, stagehands, stitchers, wigmakers, and the like. Thismodern form of stagecraft is highly technical and specialized: it comprises many sub-disciplines and a vast trove ofhistory and tradition. The majority of stagecraft lies between these two extremes. Regional theatres and largercommunity theatres will generally have a technical director and a complement of designers, each of whom has adirect hand in their respective designs.

Theatre organization and administrationThere are many modern theatre movements which go about producing theatre in a variety of ways.

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, circa 1821

Theatrical enterprise varies enormously insophistication and purpose. People who are involvedvary from professionals to hobbyists to spontaneousnovices. Theatre can be performed with no money at allor on a grand scale with multi-million dollar budgets.This diversity manifests in the abundance of theatresub-categories, which include:• Broadway theatre and West End theatre•• Community theatre•• Dinner theatre•• Fringe theatre• Off-Broadway and Off West End•• Off-Off-Broadway

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•• Regional theatre•• Summer stock theatre

Repertory companiesWhile most modern theatre companies rehearse one piece of theatre at a time, perform that piece for a set "run",retire the piece, and begin rehearsing a new show, repertory companies rehearse multiple shows at one time. Thesecompanies are able to perform these various pieces upon request and often perform works for years before retiringthem. Most dance companies operate on this repertory system. The Royal National Theatre in London performs on arepertory system.Repertory theatre generally involves a group of similarly accomplished actors, and relies more on the reputation ofthe group than on an individual star actor. It also typically relies less on strict control by a director and less onadherence to theatrical conventions, since actors who have worked together in multiple productions can respond toeach other without relying as much on convention or external direction.[54]

Producing vs. presentingIn order to put on a piece of theatre, both a theatre company and a theatre venue are needed. When a theatre companyis the sole company in residence at a theatre venue, this theatre (and its corresponding theatre company) are called aresident theatre or a producing theatre, because the venue produces its own work. Other theatre companies, as well asdance companies, do not have their own theatre venue. These companies perform at rental theatres or at presentingtheatres. Both rental and presenting theatres have no full-time resident companies. They do, however, sometimeshave one or more part-time resident companies, in addition to other independent partner companies who arrange touse the space when available. A rental theatre allows the independent companies to seek out the space, while apresenting theatre seeks out the independent companies to support their work by presenting them on their stage.Some performance groups perform in non-theatrical spaces. Such performances can take place outside or inside, in anon-traditional performance space, and include street theatre, and site specific theatre. Non-traditional venues can beused to create more immersive or meaningful environments for audiences. They can sometimes be modified moreheavily than traditional theatre venues, or can accommodate different kinds of equipment, lighting and sets.[55]

A touring company is an independent theatre or dance company that travels, often internationally, being presented ata different theatre in each city.

UnionsThere are many theatre unions including Actors Equity Association (for actors and stage managers), the StageDirectors and Choreographers Society (SDC), and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE,for designers and technicians). Many theatres require that their staff be members of these organizations.

Notes[1] Originally spelled theatre and teatre (), from around 1550 to 1700 or later, the most common spelling was theater. Between 1720 and 1750,

theater was dropped in British English, but was either retained or revived in American English (Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, 2009,CD-ROM: ISBN 9780199563838). Recent dictionaries of American English list theatre as a less common variant, e.g., Random HouseWebster's College Dictionary (1991); The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition (2006); New Oxford AmericanDictionary, third edition (2010); Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2011) (http:/ / www. merriam-webster. com/ dictionary/ theater).

[2] M. Carlson, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, (https:/ / journals. ku. edu/ index. php/ jdtc/ article/ view/ 1642/ 1606), 2011[3] Pavis (1998, 345). Drawing on the "semeiotics" of Charles Sanders Peirce, Pavis goes on to suggest that "the specificity of theatrical signs

may lie in their ability to use the three possible functions of signs: as icon (mimetically), as index (in the situation of enunciation), or assymbol (as a semiological system in the fictional mode). In effect, theatre makes the sources of the words visual and concrete: it indicates andincarnates a fictional world by means of signs, such that by the end of the process of signification and symbolization the spectator hasreconstructed a theoretical and aesthetic model that accounts for the dramatic universe" (1998, 346).

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[4] Brown (1998, 441), Cartledge (1997, 3–5), Goldhill (1997, 54). Brown writes that ancient Greek drama "was essentially the creation ofclassical Athens: all the dramatists who were later regarded as classics were active at Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE (the time of theAthenian democracy), and all the surviving plays date from this period" (1998, 441). "The dominant culture of Athens in the fifth century",Goldhill writes, "can be said to have invented theatre" (1997, 54).

[5][5] Cartledge (1997, 3, 6), Goldhill (1997, 54) and (1999, 20-xx), and Rehm (1992. 3). Goldhill argues that although activities that form "anintegral part of the exercise of citizenship" (such as when "the Athenian citizen speaks in the Assembly, exercises in the gymnasium, sings atthe symposium, or courts a boy") each have their "own regime of display and regulation," nevertheless the term "performance" provides "auseful heuristic category to explore the connections and overlaps between these different areas of activity" (1999, 1).

[6][6] Pelling (2005, 83).[7] Goldhill (1999, 25) and Pelling (2005, 83–84).[8][8] Dukore (1974, 31), Janko (1987, ix), and Ward (1945, 1).[9] Brockett and Hildy (2003, 15–19).[10] Brown (1998, 441), Cartledge (1997, 3–5), Goldhill (1997, 54), Ley (2007, 206), and Styan (2000, 140). Taxidou notes that "most scholars

now call 'Greek' tragedy 'Athenian' tragedy, which is historically correct" (2004, 104).[11] Brockett and Hildy (2003, 32–33), Brown (1998, 444), and Cartledge (1997, 3–5). Cartledge writes that although Athenians of the 4th

century judged Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides "as the nonpareils of the genre, and regularly honoured their plays with revivals, tragedyitself was not merely a 5th-century phenomenon, the product of a short-lived golden age. If not attaining the quality and stature of thefifth-century 'classics', original tragedies nonetheless continued to be written and produced and competed with in large numbers throughout theremaining life of the democracy—and beyond it" (1997, 33).

[12] Brockett and Hildy (2003, 15) and Kovacs (2005, 379). We have seven by Aeschylus, seven by Sophocles, and eighteen by Euripides. Inaddition, we also have the Cyclops, a satyr play by Euripides. Some critics since the 17th century have argued that one of the tragedies that theclassical tradition gives as Euripides'—Rhesus—is a 4th-century play by an unknown author; modern scholarship agrees with the classicalauthorities and ascribes the play to Euripides; see Walton (1997, viii, xix). (This uncertainty accounts for Brockett and Hildy's figure of 31tragedies.)

[13] Brockett and Hildy (2003, 15). The theory that Prometheus Bound was not written by Aeschylus adds a fourth, anonymous playwright tothose whose work survives.

[14] Brockett and Hildy (2003, 13–15) and Brown (1998, 441–447).[15] Brown (1998, 442) and Brockett and Hildy (2003, 15–17). Exceptions to this pattern were made, as with Euripides' Alcestis in 438 BCE.

There were also separate competitions at the City Dionysia for the performance of dithyrambs and, after 488–7 BCE, comedies.[16] Brockett and Hildy (2003, 13, 15) and Brown (1998, 442). Rehm offers the following argument as evidence that tragedy was not

institutionalised until 501 BCE: "The specific cult honoured at the City Dionysia was that of Dionysus Eleuthereus, the god ‘having to do withEleutherae’, a town on the border between Boeotia and Attica that had a sanctuary to Dionysus. At some point Athens annexedEleutherae—most likely after the overthrow of the Peisistratid tyranny in 510 and the democratic reforms of Cleisthenes in 508–07 BCE—andthe cult-image of Dionysus Eleuthereus was moved to its new home. Athenians re-enacted the incorporation of the god’s cult every year in apreliminary rite to the City Dionysia. On the day before the festival proper, the cult-statue was removed from the temple near the theatre ofDionysus and taken to a temple on the road to Eleutherae. That evening, after sacrifice and hymns, a torchlight procession carried the statueback to the temple, a symbolic re-creation of the god’s arrival into Athens, as well as a reminder of the inclusion of the Boeotian town intoAttica. As the name Eleutherae is extremely close to eleutheria, ‘freedom’, Athenians probably felt that the new cult was particularlyappropriate for celebrating their own political liberation and democratic reforms." (1992, 15).

[17] Brown (1998, 442). Jean-Pierre Vernant argues that in The Persians Aeschylus substitutes for the usual temporal distance between theaudience and the age of heroes a spatial distance between the Western audience and the Eastern Persian culture. This substitution, he suggests,produces a similar effect: "The 'historic' events evoked by the chorus, recounted by the messenger and interpreted by Darius' ghost arepresented on stage in a legendary atmosphere. The light that the tragedy sheds upon them is not that in which the political happenings of theday are normally seen; it reaches the Athenian theater refracted from a distant world of elsewhere, making what is absent seem present andvisible on the stage"; Vernant and Vidal-Naquet (1988, 245).

[18] Brown (1998, 442) and Brockett and Hildy (2003, 15–16).[19] Aristotle, Poetics, line 1449a (http:/ / www. perseus. tufts. edu/ cgi-bin/ ptext?lookup=Aristot. + Poet. + 1449a): "Comedy, as we have said,

is a representation of inferior people, not indeed in the full sense of the word bad, but the laughable is a species of the base or ugly. It consistsin some blunder or ugliness that does not cause pain or disaster, an obvious example being the comic mask which is ugly and distorted but notpainful'."

[20][20] Beacham (1996, 2).[21][21] Beacham (1996, 3).[22][22] John, Gassner, and Allen Ralph. Theatre and Drama in the Making. 1st ed. New York, NY: Applause Theatre Books, 1992. 93. Print.[23][23] Kuritz (1988, 305).[24] Brockett and Hildy (2003, 293–426).[25][25] Richmond, Swann, and Zarrilli (1993, 12).[26][26] Brandon (1997, 70) and Richmond (1998, 516).[27][27] Deal (2007, 276).[28] Moreh (1986, 565–601).

Theatre 10

[29][29] Elam (1980, 98).[30][30] Pfister (1977, 11).[31] Fergusson (1949, 2–3).[32] Burt (2008, 30–35).[33] Francis Fergusson writes that "a drama, as distinguished from a lyric, is not primarily a composition in the verbal medium; the words result,

as one might put it, from the underlying structure of incident and character. As Aristotle remarks, 'the poet, or "maker" should be the maker ofplots rather than of verses; since he is a poet because he imiates, and what he imitates are actions'" (1949, 8).

[34][34] See the entries for "opera", "musical theatre, American", "melodrama" and "Nō" in Banham (1998).[35] While there is some dispute among theatre historians, it is probable that the plays by the Roman Seneca were not intended to be performed.

Manfred by Byron is a good example of a "dramatic poem." See the entries on "Seneca" and "Byron (George George)" in Banham (1998).[36] Some forms of improvisation, notably the Commedia dell'arte, improvise on the basis of 'lazzi' or rough outlines of scenic action (see

Gordon (1983) and Duchartre (1929)). All forms of improvisation take their cue from their immediate response to one another, theircharacters' situations (which are sometimes established in advance), and, often, their interaction with the audience. The classic formulations ofimprovisation in the theatre originated with Joan Littlewood and Keith Johnstone in the UK and Viola Spolin in the USA; see Johnstone(1981) and Spolin (1963).

[37][37] Rehm (1992, 150n7).[38] Jones (2003, 4–11).[39] The first "Edwardian musical comedy" is usually considered to be In Town (1892), even though it was produced eight years before the

beginning of the Edwardian era; see, for example, Fraser Charlton, "What are EdMusComs?" (http:/ / www. staff. ncl. ac. uk/ fraser. charlton/edmuscom/ page12/ edmuscom_what. html) (FrasrWeb 2007, accessed May 12, 2011).

[40] S.H. Butcher, (http:/ / ebooks. adelaide. edu. au/ a/ aristotle/ poetics/ ), 2011[41] Banham (1998, 1118) and Williams (1966, 14–16).[42][42] Williams (1966, 16).[43] Williams (1966, 13–84) and Taxidou (2004, 193–209).[44] See Carlson (1993), Pfister (1977), Elam (1980) and Taxidou (2004). Drama, in the narrow sense, cuts across the traditional division

between comedy and tragedy in an anti- or a-generic deterritorialization from the mid-19th century onwards. Both Bertolt Brecht and AugustoBoal define their epic theatre projects (Non-Aristotelian drama and Theatre of the Oppressed respectively) against models of tragedy. Taxidou,however, reads epic theatre as an incorporation of tragic functions and its treatments of mourning and speculation (2004, 193–209).

[45][45] Dukore (1974, 31) and Janko (1987, ix).[46] Aristotle Poetics 1447a13 (1987, 1).[47] Carlson (1993, 19) and Janko (1987, xx, 7–10).[48][48] Carlson (1993, 16).[49][49] Benedetti (1999a, 124, 202) and (2008b, 6), Carnicke (1998, 162), and Gauss (1999, 2). In 1902, Stanislavski wrote that "the author writes

on paper. The actor writes with his body on the stage" and that the "score of an opera is not the opera itself and the script of a play is notdrama until both are made flesh and blood on stage"; quoted by Benedetti (1999a, 124).

[50] Banham (1998, 1032), Carnicke (1998, 1), Counsell (1996, 24–25), Gordon (2006, 37–40), and Leach (2004, 29).[51][51] Counsell (1996, 25).[52][52] Banham (1998, 1032), Carnicke (1998, 1, 167), Counsell (1996, 24), and Milling and Ley (2001, 1).[53] Benedetti (2005, 147–148) and Carnicke (1998, 1, 8).[54][54] Peterson (1982.)[55] Alice T. Carter, " Non-traditional venues can inspire art, or just great performances (http:/ / www. pittsburghlive. com/ x/ pittsburghtrib/

s_575857. html)", Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 2008-07-07. Retrieved 2011-02-12.

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Theatre 11

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Article Sources and Contributors 14

Article Sources and ContributorsTheatre  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=575559278  Contributors: 05, 137.28.191.xxx, 13alexander, 205.188.192.xxx, 209.245.70.xxx, 209.245.75.xxx, 2601andrew,2A02:2788:64:A34:7DF9:7A73:2A3D:6570, 4.62.199.xxx, 777sms, A.Hassen, ABF, ALargeElk, Aaron Brenneman, Abbiekay47, Abdullais4u, Adamjdahl, Addshore, Adikhebat, Adolphus79,Aedholm, Aesopos, Ahoerstemeier, Aillema, AjitPD, Ajraddatz, Alansohn, Alex.muller, Alliecheercat, Alphachimp, Alsandro, Altenmann, Alvestrand, Amikeco, Andre Engels, AndreasPraefcke,Andrewjregan, Angela, Angenhariaus, Aniten21, Anna Frodesiak, Anoopanil0001, Aphaia, Apparition11, Aristophanes68, Art LaPella, ArtifexMayhem, Artilum, Artoasis, Assassinsblade, Atlan,Autoerrant, Averaver, Awesome12345678910, Bardofcornish, Bardsandwarriors, Barkingdoc, Barrrower, Barry Kay Archive, Before My Ken, Bejaypea, Bepp, BesigedB, Bessieb1, Bevfilm,Beyond silence, Bfx12a9, Bib, BirgitteSB, BishkekRocks, Bkonrad, Blanchardb, 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