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...)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a four-act play written by Thomas Russell Sullivan in collaboration with the actor Richard Mansfield(pictured). It is an adaptation of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, an 1886 novella by Robert Louis Stevenson. The story focuses on the respected London doctor Henry Jekyll, who uses a potion to transform into Edward Hyde, a loathsome criminal. Intrigued by the opportunity to play a dual role, Mansfield secured the stage rights and asked Sullivan to write the adaptation. The play debuted in Boston on May 9, 1887, then opened on Broadway in September of that year. Mansfield's performance as the dual character was acclaimed by critics. The play opened in London in August 1888, just before the first Jack the Ripper murders. Some press reports compared the murderer to the Jekyll-Hyde character, and Mansfield was suggested as a possible suspect. Mansfield's company continued to perform the play in the US until shortly before his death in 1907. Sullivan made changes from Stevenson's story that have been adopted by many subsequent adaptations, including several film versions that were derived from the play.
Joseph Grimaldi (1778–1837) was an English actor, comedian, dancer, and the Regency era's most successful entertainer. He popularised and expanded the role of "Clown" in the harlequinade that formed a part of British pantomimes during the 1800s, and became a key pantomime performer at the Drury Lane, Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden theatres. While a boy, he appeared on stage at Drury Lane as "Little Clown" in the pantomime The Triumph of Mirth; or, Harlequin's Wedding. Other successful roles at the theatre followed, but he left in 1806 to take up theatrical residencies at the Covent Garden and Sadler's Wells theatres. As he matured, he began performing as Clown, for which character he created the whiteface make-up design still used in pantomime and by many other clowns today. The numerous injuries he received as a result of his energetic performances eventually led to a decline in his health and to his semi-retirement in 1823. Living in obscurity during his final years, he became an impoverished alcoholic. Grimaldi died at home in Islington, aged 59, having outlived his wife and his actor son Joseph Samuel.
... that the Neil Simon Theatre, a New York City landmark, was the first Broadway theater renamed after a living playwright?
... that the founders of New York City's Circle in the Square Theatre had a total of $320 when they leased an inn in 1951?
... that actress Zita Moulton first starred in theatre performances after a bet with her fiancé that she would be able to get a stage job within 24 hours?
... that New York City's Valencia Theatre was sold to a church in 1977 for $1?
... that at the Guild Theatre, the higher an actor ascended, the farther they were from stardom?
... that in 1911 the Butterfly Theater featured a pipe organ worth US$10,000 (equivalent to US$327,000 in 2023)?
...that the modern meaning of "ballad", a slow, sentimental tune or love song, often written in a fairly standardized form, came about from Tin Pan Alley and Broadway composers?
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Amédée Forestier - Illustrated London News - Gilbert and Sullivan - Ruddygore (Ruddigore)
Anna Fernqvist, rollporträtt - SMV - H1 122 - Restoration
Annie Oakley shooting glass balls, 1894
Arizona - 1907 poster
Atelier Nadar - Fly scene from Offenbach's Orphée aux enfers with Jeanne Granier as Eurydice and Eugène Vauthier as Jupiter, 1887 revival, wide-angle shot
Atelier Nadar - Galli-Marié in Bizet's Carmen
Atelier Nadar - Jacques Isnardon, Vaudeville
Auguste François-Marie Gorguet - poster for the première performance of Édouard Lalo's Le roi d'Ys (1888)
Barbier, Jules, Nadar, Gallica
Bernhardt Hamlet2
Big White Fog
Blanche Roosevelt by Napoleon Sarony
Bon-Ton Burlesquers2
Boris Kustodiev - Portrait of Fyodor Chaliapin - Google Art Project
Carl Nielsen c. 1908 - Restoration
Carloz Schwabe - Vincent d'Indy's Fervaal
Caroline Hill as Mirza in W. S. Gilbert's The Palace of Truth
Charles Frohman presents William Gillette in his new four act drama, Sherlock Holmes (LOC var 1364) (edit)
Charles Gounod (1890) by Nadar
Charles Motte - Rossini et Georges IV - la soirée de Brighton
Charles-Antoine Cambon - La Esmeralda, Act 3, Scene 2 set
Charles-Antoine Cambon - La Esmeralda, Act III, Scene 1 set design (Version 2)
Charles-Antoine Cambon - Set design for Act V, Scene 2 of Fromental Halévy's La reine de Chypre
Charles-Antoine Cambon - Set design for the première of Rossini's Robert Bruce, Act III, Scene 3
CharltonHestonCivilRightsMarch1963Retouched
Cherubini, Luigi - Medea - Restoration
Chicago Theatre blend
Christine Nilsson Nadar
Cody-Buffalo-Bill-LOC
Colette and Maurice Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges, 1st scene
Colette and Maurice Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges, 2nd scene
Collina presso Nagasaki, bozzetto di Alexandre Bailly, Marcel Jambon per Madama Butterfly (1906) - Archivio Storico Ricordi ICON000079 - Restoration
Colosseum in Rome, Italy - April 2007
Composer Rossini G 1865 by Carjat - Restoration
Cover to Doris Waltz by P. Bucalossi after Alfred Cellier - Art by Nicholas Hanhart
Célestin Nanteuil - Jules Massenet - Don César de Bazan
Danny Lee Wynter
Donald Pleasence Allan Warren edit
Dudley Hardy - Poster for Basil Hood and Arthur Sullivan's The Rose of Persia
Dudley Hardy - Poster for His Majesty
Elliott & Fry - photograph W. S. Gilbert
Elsie Leslie (1899) by Zaida Ben-Yusuf
Ethel Smyth
Ethel Waters - William P. Gottlieb
Eugène Du Faget - Costume designs for Guillaume Tell - 1-3. Laure Cinti-Damoreau as Mathilde, Adolphe Nourrit as Arnold Melchtal, and Nicolas Levasseur as Walter Furst
Eugène Du Faget - Costume designs for Les Huguenots - 2. Julie Dorus-Gras as Marguerite, Adolphe Nourrit as Raoul, and Cornélie Falcon as Valentine
Eugène Grasset - Jules Massenet - Werther
Eva Le Gallienne (mnwp.275003, cropped restoration)