Portal:Theatre

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...)

• ...that the BBC recorded live performances of Hancock's Half Hour, The Goon Show and Steptoe and Son at the Playhouse Theatre (pictured) in London?
• ...that in 1661, Lisle's Tennis Court in Lincoln's Inn Fields, London became the first public theatre in England to feature moveable scenery on sliding wings?
• ...that the Cockpit-in-Court theatre in the Palace of Whitehall was used to stage court masques for the Stuart Kings of England, but was originally built by Henry VIII as a venue for cockfighting?