Portal:Theatre

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...)

• ... that the Harris Theater (pictured) is the first new performing arts venue built in downtown Chicago since 1929?
• ...that in 1877 the 4,000-seat Queen's Theatre staged a spectacular and expensive production of The Last Days of Pompeii that flopped: the earth did not quake, the volcano did not erupt, and acrobats fell onto the cast?
• ...that Acorn Antiques: The Musical was directed by Trevor Nunn and opened at the Theatre Royal Haymarket with a three month sell-out run?