Portal:Theatre

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Ancient Greece theatre in Taormina, Sicily, Italy

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...)

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Carousel (1945) is the second musical by the team of Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (book and lyrics), after their hit Oklahoma! (1943). It was adapted from Ferenc Molnár's 1909 play Liliom, transplanting the setting to the U.S. state of Maine. Carousel barker Billy Bigelow's romance with millworker Julie Jordan cost them their jobs; after he attempts a robbery that goes tragically wrong, he is given a chance to make things right. The show includes the songs "If I Loved You", "June Is Bustin' Out All Over" and "You'll Never Walk Alone". It opened on Broadway on April 19, 1945, and was an immediate hit with both critics and audiences. It initially ran there for 890 performances, and duplicated its success in the West End in 1950. It has been repeatedly revived and recorded. A 1992 production by Nicholas Hytner enjoyed success in London, in New York, and on tour. Rodgers later wrote that Carousel was his favorite of all his musicals. In 1999, Time magazine named it the best musical of the 20th century.

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Henry Edwards
Henry Edwards (1827–1891) was an English-born stage actor, writer and expert in the science of insects who gained fame in Australia, San Francisco, and New York City for his theatre work. Edwards was drawn to the theatre early in life, and he appeared in amateur productions in London. After sailing to Australia, Edwards appeared professionally in Shakespearean plays and light comedies, primarily in Melbourne and Sydney. Throughout his childhood in England and his acting career in Australia, he was greatly interested in collecting insects, and the National Museum of Victoria used the results of his Australian fieldwork as part of the genesis of their collection. After writing a series of influential studies on butterflies and moths on the West Coast of the United States, he was elected a life member of the California Academy of Sciences. Relocating eastward, a brief time spent in Boston theatre led to a connection to Wallack's Theatre and further renown in New York City. There, Edwards edited three volumes of the leading insect journal Papilio and published a major work on the life of the butterfly. His large collection of insect specimens served as the foundation of the American Museum of Natural History's butterfly and moth studies.

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George Bernard Shaw
In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.

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