theatre

Table of Contents

References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics

Images & Videos

Watch self-blinded Oedipus confer with chorus leader about fulfillment of Apollo's prophecy in Oedipus Rex

Watch Shakespeare's tragic protagonist Hamlet deliver a soliloquy in the second act of Hamlet

Listen to Norris Houghton discuss the difficulty of staging Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard

theatre of the Auditorium Building in Chicago

performance of William Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost

Go inside a Globe Theatre model with Maynard Mack to examine features of the Elizabethan playhouse

For Students

theatre summary

Discover

General Pershing's troops moving into Mexico in 1917 during World War I.

Timeline of World War I

Julius Caesar in full Gaius Julius Caesar (100? BCE-44 BCE) statue in Rimini, Italy. Roman general and statesman and dictator

The Time Julius Caesar Was Captured by Pirates

Queen Elizabeth II addresses at opening of Parliament. (Date unknown on photo, but may be 1958, the first time the opening of Parliament was filmed.)

All 119 References in “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” Explained

Washington DC.,USA, April 26, 1989. Supporters for and against legal abortion face off during a protest outside the United States Supreme Court Building during Webster V Health Services

Pro and Con: Abortion

The Battle of New Orleans, by E. Percy Moran, c. 1910. Andrew Jackson, War of 1812.

26 Decade-Defining Events in U.S. History

African Americans demonstrating for voting rights in front of the White House as police and others watch, March 12, 1965. One sign reads, "We demand the right to vote everywhere." Voting Rights Act, civil rights.

Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement

A Factory Interior, watercolor, pen and gray ink, graphite, and white goache on wove paper by unknown artist, c. 1871-91; in the Yale Center for British Art. Industrial Revolution England

Inventors and Inventions of the Industrial Revolution

Arts & Culture

theatre

art

Also known as: drama

Written by Ned Chaillet, Tyrone Guthrie, Tracy C. DavisSee All

Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated: Mar 27, 2024 • Article History

lithograph poster for Hamlet

See all media

Category: Arts & Culture

Also spelled:: theater

Key People:: Vigdís Finnbogadóttir; Henry Bauchau; Charles Frohman; Edward Franklin Albee

Related Topics:: Western theatre; theatrical production; African theatre; performance art; Black theatre

See all related content →

Recent News

Mar. 26, 2024, 9:08 AM ET (MSN)

'Head on the chopping block': Claims Shakespeare made theatre 'too white and cisgender'

theatre, in dramatic arts, an art concerned almost exclusively with live performances in which the action is precisely planned to create a coherent and significant sense of drama. Though the word theatre is derived from the Greek theaomai, “to see,” the performance itself may appeal either to the ear or to the eye, as is suggested by the interchangeability of the terms spectator (which derives from words meaning “to view”) and audience (which derives from words meaning “to hear”). Sometimes the appeal is strongly intellectual, as in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but the intellectual element in itself is no assurance of ...(100 of 8217 words)

Access the full article

Help support true facts by becoming a member.