Theater

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Theater or theatre is a building or place where plays or movies are presented; or the writing and producing of plays. Theatre derives from the Greek "amphitheatre", which was a circular open air venue with rows of stone seats built into a hillside looking down at a stage. Today, the word theatre still describes a performance venue, but it also means much more.

Theatre is the art of telling a story or communicating an idea through performance. Long before there was a written language, history and legends were handed down orally; people memorized and performed the stories, poems, songs and dances of their culture.

Act 1, Scene 1

Scripted plays were first performed by the ancient Greeks as early as 500 BC, at religious festivals and for entertainment. The development of writing meant that scripts from that time survived and are still performed today.

Under Roman rule, the focus was on entertainment rather than religion - the Roman circus, with its lions, gladiators and condemned men, created an atmosphere similar to televised wrestling matches. But during the middle ages, religion came back to the fore and theatre was dominated by morality and miracle plays.

Theatre for the Masses

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) took theatre to new heights of popularity during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. His Globe Theatre, built in 1599 in London, held over 2000 people. Shakespeare is still one of the most popular western playwrights, and several of his works have been made into Hollywood block-busters. He wrote 36 plays - tragedies, comedies and histories - as well as 150 sonnets and numerous songs.

Theatre continued to flourish as a form of popular entertainment after Shakespeare's time, and in England survived a period when the performance of plays was banned for religious reasons.

Melodrama developed as the style of the day in the 18th century and 19th century - actors used grand gestures, heavy make-up and symbolic costumes to convey a series of recognizable characters and emotions. This larger-than-life style was partly required by the primitive lighting; the actors were lit by a row of lamps along the front of the stage that produced a greenish light by burning lime - hence the origin of the phrase "lime_light".

All the World's a Stage

In Italy, commedia dell'arte became popular and influenced the development of theatre internationally. This style employed mask, mime, slapstick comedy and stock characters, such as Arlecchino (Harlequin), Pantalone and Colombina, to tell satirical stories.

During the 1800s, the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) and Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) were writing in a style very different to melodrama, called naturalism. They wrote about the dilemmas faced by ordinary people, and how people reacted to or dealt with those dilemmas.

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• Noh, Kabuki and Butoh in Japan
• Kathikali and Bharatanatyam in India
• Indonesian puppet and mask theatre
• American Vaudeville

Theatre is Alive

In the 20th century, live theatre faced a huge challenge from film, television and video. Theatre responded by moving away from realism, which can be more effectively achieved on screen, and exploring other styles including:

• surrealism
• symbolism
• Theatre of the Absurd
• Epic Theatre

Modern writers, directors and actors have pushed the boundaries, changing the way that actors perform and audiences perceive theatre. Samuel Beckett, Bertold Brecht, Constantin Stanislavsky and Lee Strasberg have all influenced the development of modern western theatre.

Theatre also encompasses other forms of performing arts, including mime, puppetry, dance and musical theatre. Spectacular productions such as Les Miserables, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera have contributed to a revival in the popularity of musical theatre.

Who Makes Theatre?

For hundreds of years it was not considered appropriate for women to work in the theatre, however it's far from an exclusively male world. In the late 1600s, playwright Aphra Behn became the first known professional woman writer in England; since then, women have continued to work in all aspects of theatre.

Theatre is a team process: as well as writers, there are directors, who interpret and translate the script; actors, who perform the playwright's words and characters; designers, who create magic with light, sound, costume and scenery; and theatre administrators, who manage the business of theatre.

Most importantly, there is the audience: the real magic of theatre is in the relationship between the actor and the audience, and the suspension of disbelief by both.

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