''For other usages see Theatre (disambiguation)

Theatre or theater (Greek "theatron", "θέατρον") is the branch of the performing arts concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience using combinations of speech, gesture, music, dance, sound and spectacle — indeed any one or more elements of the other performing arts. In addition to the standard narrative dialogue style, theatre takes such forms as opera, ballet, mime, kabuki, classical Indian dance, Chinese opera, mummers' plays, and pantomime.

Overview of theatre

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"Drama" (literally translated, Action, from a verbal root meaning "I do") is that branch of theatre in which speech, either from written text (plays), or improvised is paramount. "Musical theatre" is a form of theatre combining music, songs, dance routines, and spoken dialogue. However, theatre is more than just what one sees on stage. Theatre involves an entire world behind the scenes that creates the costumes, sets and lighting to make the overall effect interesting. There is a particularly long tradition of political theatre, intended to educate audiences on contemporary issues and encourage social change. Various creeds, Catholicism for instance, have built upon the entertainment value of theatre and created (for example) passion plays, mystery plays and morality plays.

There is an enormous variety of philosophies, artistic processes, and theatrical approaches to creating plays and drama. Some are connected to political or spiritual ideologies, and some are based on purely "artistic" concerns. Some processes focus on a story, some on theatre as an event, some on theatre as a catalyst for social change. According to Aristotle's seminal theatrical critique Poetics, there are six elements necessary for theatre. They are Plot, Character, Idea, Language, Song, and Spectacle. The 17th-century Spanish writer Lope de Vega wrote that for theatre one needs "three boards, two actors, and one passion". Others notable for their contribution to theatrical philosophy are Konstantin Stanislavski, Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, Orson Welles, Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski.

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The Japan Times: News & Business

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Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:10:00 -0500
LONDON — The World Health Organization claimed this week that "social injustice is killing people on a grand scale." Its major report on the "Social Determinants of Health" concludes that social and economic inequality is a major global cause of disease and that only massive government intervention and redistribution of wealth can improve the health of the poor. But, as with many prescriptions, the side effects would be worse than the disease. The WHO report revolves around the idea that relative poverty — as opposed to absolute poverty — is an important determinant of health. This is based on medical research conducted in the 1990s that purported to show that people lower on the... Read the full story
Veiled sexuality meshes with Muslim values
Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:11:00 -0500
NEW YORK — A woman swathed in black to her ankles, wearing a head scarf or a full chador, walks down a European or North American street, surrounded by other women in halter tops, miniskirts and short shorts. She passes under immense billboards on which other women swoon in sexual ecstasy, cavort in lingerie or simply stretch out languorously, almost fully naked. Could this image be any more iconic of the discomfort the West has with the social mores of Islam, and vice versa? Ideological battles are often waged with women's bodies as their emblems, and Western Islamophobia is no exception. When France banned head scarves in schools, it used the hijab as a proxy for Western values in... Read the full story
Fukuda hounded out of office
Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:12:00 -0500
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Need for mandate
Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:13:00 -0500
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Top hedge fund manager Mukai joins Epic Partners
Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:14:00 -0500
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Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:15:00 -0500
KABUL — A suspect in the abduction and killing of a Japanese aid worker in eastern Afghanistan has confessed he was paid a "large sum of money" by Pakistan's intelligence service to carry out the attack, the Afghan intelligence service said Wednesday. A statement issued by the National Directorate of Security said that Adel Shah, one of the two suspects arrested by Afghan security forces, made the confession while being interrogated over the kidnapping of Kazuya Ito, a 31-year-old agriculture expert from Shizuoka Prefecture who was working with Peshawar-Kai, a Fukuoka-based aid group. Read the full story

Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion

Politics › Koike, Ishihara, Yosano to challenge Aso in LDP presidential race
Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:55:00 +0100
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Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:15:00 +0100
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Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:13:00 +0100
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Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:09:00 +0100
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Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:54:00 +0100
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