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 Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a
theatre in the
Covent Garden district of
London, facing Catherine Street and backing onto
Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663. For its first two centuries, Drury Lane could "reasonably have claimed to be London's leading theatre" and thus one of the most important theatres in the English-speaking world. Through most of that time, it was one of a small handful of
patent theatres that were granted
monopoly rights to the production of "legitimate" drama in London. The first theatre on the location was built on behest of
Thomas Killigrew in the early years of the
English Restoration. The building that stands today opened in 1812. It has been home to actors as diverse as Shakespearean
Edmund Kean, comedian
Dan Leno, and musical composer and performer
Ivor Novello. Today, the theatre is owned by composer
Andrew Lloyd Webber and generally stages popular
musical theatre. It is a
Grade I listed building.
Joseph Grimaldi (1778–1837) was an English actor, comedian, dancer, and the
Regency era's most successful entertainer. He popularised and expanded the role of "
Clown" in the
harlequinade that formed a part of British
pantomimes during the 1800s, and became a key pantomime performer at the
Drury Lane,
Sadler's Wells and
Covent Garden theatres. While a boy, he appeared on stage at Drury Lane as "Little Clown" in the pantomime The Triumph of Mirth; or, Harlequin's Wedding. Other successful roles at the theatre followed, but he left in 1806 to take up
theatrical residencies at the Covent Garden and Sadler's Wells theatres. As he matured, he began performing as Clown, for which character he created the
whiteface make-up design still used in pantomime and by many other clowns today. The numerous injuries he received as a result of his energetic performances eventually led to a decline in his health and to his semi-retirement in 1823. Living in obscurity during his final years, he became an impoverished alcoholic. Grimaldi died at home in
Islington, aged 59, having outlived his wife and his actor son
Joseph Samuel.
... that at the time of its construction in 1920, the Howard Theatre in
Atlanta was the second-largest movie theater in the world, with a seating capacity of 2,700?
... that in 1959, the new owner of the Coronet Theatre wanted to rename the theater after his favorite playwright,
Eugene O'Neill, whose widow objected?
Selected quote
The playwright of today likes to believe that he is throwing light upon his time, when his time is actually throwing light upon him.
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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)