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Portal:Theatre

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The Theatre Portal

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 experiences 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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Flyer for the Broadway production
Night of January 16th is a play by Russian-American author Ayn Rand, inspired by the death of Ivar Kreuger, an industrialist and accused swindler known as the Match King. The play is set in a courtroom during a murder trial, and members of the audience are chosen to play the jury. The court hears the case of Karen Andre, a former secretary and lover of businessman Bjorn Faulkner, of whose murder she is accused. The jury must rely on character testimony to decide whether Andre is guilty; the play's ending depends on their verdict. Rand wanted to dramatize a conflict between individualism and conformity. The play was first produced in 1934 in Los Angeles under the title Woman on Trial. Producer Al Woods took it to Broadway for the 1935–36 season and re-titled it Night of January 16th. It became a hit and ran for seven months. The play has been adapted as a movie, as well as for television and radio. Rand had many disputes with Woods over the play, and in 1968 re-edited it for publication as her "definitive" version.

In this month

William Wells Brown

Terry-Thomas in May 1951
Terry-Thomas (1911–90) was an English comedian and character actor, known to a world-wide audience through his portrayals of upper class cads, toffs and bounders. His dress sense and style were striking, as was the gap of a third of an inch between his two front teeth. He worked his way through uncredited film parts in the 1930s before wartime service with Entertainments National Service Association and Stars in Battledress led to a post-war career on stage and then into How Do You View? (1949), the first comedy series on British television. He appeared in British films such as Private's Progress (1956), Blue Murder at St Trinian's (1957), and Carlton-Browne of the F.O. (1959). During the early 1960s he worked extensively in Hollywood, providing a coarser version of his screen persona in films such as Bachelor Flat (1962), It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and How to Murder Your Wife (1965). After being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1971, he spent much of his fortune on medical treatments. He lived in poverty towards the end of his life, existing on charitable hand-outs, before a 1989 charity gala in his honour brought him financial comfort for the remaining months before his death.
  • ... that the Times Square Theater, proposed for redevelopment since 1990, remained empty three decades later?
  • ... that an unfinished cut of Revolution+1, a film about the life of the suspected assassin of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, was released in theaters the day before Abe's state funeral?
  • ... that many designers and directors avoided the Vivian Beaumont Theater because of its unconventional mixture of stage designs?
  • ... that although the Liberty Theatre was built in 1904 to host the Rogers Brothers' musicals, the brothers made their last appearance there three years later?
  • ... that the studios of a California TV station were converted back into a movie theater after it went out of business?
  • ... that in 2014 the European Theatre Convention started a programme known as Dialogue of Cultures to support exchanges with theatres in Ukraine and other Eastern European countries?

Selected quote

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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