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 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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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.

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Hattie Jacques (1922–1980) was an English comedy actress of stage, radio and screen, known to a world-wide audience through her portrayals of strict, no-nonsense characters in 14 of the Carry On films. She started her career on stage at the Players' Theatre, London, before progressing onto radio, where she appeared in three popular BBC series, It's That Man Again, Educating Archie and Hancock's Half Hour. Her cinematic debut—in Green for Danger—was brief and uncredited, but she grew to have a prolific screen career. Jacques developed a long professional stage and television partnership with Eric Sykes, with whom she co-starred in the long-running series Sykes and Sykes and a.... The role endeared her to the public and the two became staples of British television. Her private life was turbulent: she was married to the actor John Le Mesurier from 1949 until their divorce in 1965, a separation caused by her five-year affair with another man. Jacques, who had been overweight since her teenage years, suffered ill-health soon after the separation from Le Mesurier. She died in 1980 of a heart attack.

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Ralph Richardson
Acting is merely the art of keeping a large number of people from coughing.

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