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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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Front cover of Playbill for Me and Juliet
Me and Juliet is a musical comedy with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II. The story deals with romance between the cast and crew backstage at a long-running musical, a show-within-the-show (also named Me and Juliet). The musical premiered in 1953 and ran for almost a year on Broadway, closing after it exhausted its advance sales. It received no Tony Award nominations. The play required complex machinery, designed by Jo Mielziner, so that the audience could view action not only on the stage but also in the wings and high above the stage near the spotlights. The show garnered less than favorable reviews, though Mielziner's staging won praise from audiences and critics. With the exception of a short run in Chicago, there was no national tour, and the show is rarely seen—although a small-scale production was presented by London's Finborough Theatre in 2010. "No Other Love" from the show became a hit record in 1953 for Perry Como and in 1956 for Ronnie Hilton.

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Aphra Behn

Ralph Richardson in 1949
Ralph Richardson (1902–1983) was an English actor who played more than sixty film roles and, along with his contemporaries John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier, dominated the British stage of the mid-20th century. In 1931 he joined the Old Vic, playing mostly Shakespearean roles. He led the company the following season, succeeding Gielgud, who had taught him much about stage technique. After he left the company, a series of leading roles took him to stardom in the West End and on Broadway. In the 1940s, Richardson was the co-director of the Old Vic company. He and Olivier led the company to Europe and Broadway in 1945 and 1946. In the 1950s, in the West End and occasionally on tour, Richardson played in modern and classic works including The Heiress, Home at Seven and Three Sisters. Richardson was cast in leading roles in British and American films including Things to Come in the 1930s, The Fallen Idol and The Heiress in the 1940s, and Long Day's Journey into Night and Doctor Zhivago in the 1960s. He received nominations and awards in the UK, Europe and the US for his stage and screen work from 1948 until his sudden death at the age of eighty, and earned a posthumous Academy Award nomination for his final film, Greystoke.

Selected quote

Peter Ustinov
By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.
Peter Ustinov, Christian Science Monitor, 1962

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