Talk:Theatre

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To-do list for Theatre:

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Start: Domestic drama dramatic literature (Different from "play" in this sense) : Environmental theater European Theatre Award Golden Mask Award (Russia) Molière Award (France) :Sound designer (Theatre) (There is,though, an article for movie sound designers ) :Walt Disney Modular Theater These are the current red links on the Theater page Expand: costume designer Amateur Theatre These links are identified as stubs or otherwise really need work. Images needed Perhaps some exterior shots of theatres Some interior images would help with the technical descriptions To-do copy editing organisation financing Theater Festivals Add Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon

Archives

Archive 1 (March 2005 – June 2006)

[edit] Unclear Style: "Vanguard-style theatre"

Does anyone know what vanguard-style theatre is? If so, perhaps we could make the link under "Theatre Venues and Styles" point to a specific vanguard page, rather than the disambiguation page. --Lackthereof 17:46, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Or we could eliminate it until such a time as there is a valid article or section to link to (which is what I just did). Cheers, GentlemanGhost 22:02, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merging Drama and Theatre

The two articles are now too similar. Unless someone writes an article that distinguishes Drama from Theatre, I would vote to merge them. If there are two separate articles, they should start off by saying that the other topic is covered in the other place. --Ssilvers 01:26, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. theatre and drama are two completely separate subjects if you explore their means and definitions. Drama can specifically refer to a genre, a story, art, an emotional quality, and commonly used to describe theatre class. Theatre on the other hand refers directly to a form of live entertainment that incorporates many types of artistic elements. Theatre can refer to simply a building, profession, live entertainment, group of people, place of action, and/or an audience. In end, this article should be cleaned up as it does not truly describe theatre or drama in a notable way.

Not OK. "Drama" refers to the literary genre and also to a stylistic element in the arts (e.g., Baroque painting is dramatic). "Theatre" refers to the entire art form, incorporating acting, effects, costume, architecture--AND dramatic literature. Perhaps the two articles need re-writing to reflect more strict definitions. Truddick 14:05, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the above statement. Drama and theatre are two distinctive things. Dramas include plays, films, television shows, radio shows, and other performed works based in literature, with artistic intentions, and involving conflict and action.

I agree the articles should not be merged as there are subtitle differences between the two terms, as well as other meaning for the terms (i.e. drama- emotional turmoil) See also links should be in place, but the two entries should not be combined

Jacob Z Klimaszewski (Cambridge UK) - The articles of "Drama" and "Theatre" should NOT be merged. As they are totally different. Drama, is an art form, it shows in essence the behavioural traits of people, or orginsations both in a realistic setting and an ideological one, Drama can be manifested into works of theatre, but also film, television and literature. Theatre is the concept of public performance, and can accomodate ANY performing act. A musical concert for example, is a work of theatre just as much as a straight play is.

Good point, Jacob. But the underlying reason the articles were probably merged was that two groups unwittingly started out writing about the same topic one beginning with "Drama" and the other with the T-word. The particular practicioners of the stage art who haunt Wikipedia and insist on inflicting their misunderstandings on the general public, our readers, tend to take a rather proprietory view of any words related to their field, including which spelling ought to be used for the T-word (go to the Archive link above if you don't believe me). So I am sure your points about the other uses of "drama" will be lost on them. In other words, there is no one to add those ohter points to a Drama article, if it still existed, and it is likely that the T-people would just vandalize any attempts to describe drama as anything beyond simply the T-trade to which they belong as we have witnessed all too often in this article. W.C. 02:21, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

W.C. - while I am not going to disagree with the idea that drama and theatre have no cross-overs I am utterly and completely with Jacob on this one. Most commercial theatre uses drama, but the moment you look outside of the straight-and-narrow suddenly you start to see that theatre encompasses a huge range of things that are as far removed from drama as the average Wikipedian is from attractive single women. This isn't just limited to the more obscure practitioners either - I don't see there as being anything particuarly dramatic about Waiting For Godot, or Peter Hendke for example. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sebbi (talk • contribs) 00:38, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Archive

Shouldn't this page include an archive, or was the whole of earlier discussion moved to the spelling page? Paul B 17:12, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Oddly enough, the entire earlier discussion (at least they way I found it) was about spelling... --Yossarian 19:22, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Paul, take a look in the history at:

(cur) (last) 18:52, June 29, 2006 Dramatic (Talk | contribs) (archived discussions more than 7 days old)

It appears user "dramatic" intended to archive the older discussions but that in fact his edit was not done successfully. For the time being, until someone can take the time to properly fix this, I'd suggest persons interested in past discussions access them by clicking on the date highlighted above. W.C. 18:11, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Firstly, I reversed an archive which removed everything includign the todo list and posts an hour old. Then (never having archived a page before) I followed the instructions at Wikipedia:How_to_archive_a_talk_page. If that hasn't worked properly, I'm sorry, I haven't a clue how to fix it. Thirdly, someone else has done further archiving since then. dramatic 21:33, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Dramatic, thanks for your reply. Maybe we should all let this thing sit for about a week to allow for discussion as to which of the two methods of archiving is best (see How to archive link above). And then archive the newest version of the previous talk, which Dramatic has pointed out is a version that was created after his archiving attempt.W.C. 08:54, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I've put all the previous discussion into Talk:Theatre/Archive 1 and linked to it from here. The Spelling subpage didn't work because it referenced previous discussions. violet/riga (t) 19:47, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree the articles should not be merged as there are subtitle differences between the two terms, as well as other meaning for the terms (i.e. drama- emotional turmoil) See also links should be in place, but the two entries should not be combined

[edit] List of Playwrights in See Also section

Why are the playwrights listed in See Also section more relevant to the general topic of Theatre than any other playwright? All listed here are also listed in the List of Playwrights article. Since this article already links to List of Playwrights, I am removing the individual playwrights listed here (Aphra Behn, Arthur Miller, August Strindberg, Clifford Odets, David Mamet, Eugene O'Neill, Henrik Ibsen, Lillian Hellman, Tennessee Williams, William Shakespeare). Bfx12a9 18:33, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Theatre vs Theater in the US

I believe that "theatre" is most commonly used for Shakespearean plays, and "theater" is more commonly used as a synonym for "cinema" in the US. 67.188.172.165 00:07, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Those who hold opinions about the spellings, or have heard opinions of others and wondered whether or not they were correct, may also want to see what statistical analysis of actual use of these two spellings tells us. That's been discussed earlier here (just click on this link) W.C. 02:06, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I personally didn't like the way that was conducted. They way it was set up they had only the opinions of a few people people who would bother to read the entire page. I like to go by a comparison of the number of hits on a google search. But the discussion is over and I'm too late.74.69.234.9 02:23, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

It's never to late to prevent the Brits from injecting their spellings for words into Wikipedia ;P Never give up, never surrender!BcRIPster 16:25, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Hold on here! I just read that page that W.C. referenced and the the majority of the votes were for "er", and the overall tone of the page was a decision to stay with "er", so why the heck is this page now "re". I call that it be changed back. Who want's to host the vote or make the change? If nobody steps up in a few days I will take it upon myself to correct this. Additionally looking at the Google word fight page, and doing other checking "er" is the common usage so I strongly believe it should be changed back, irregardless my teasing our Queen's English friends :) BcRIPster 16:32, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

That debate (referenced by W.C. should be disregarded. The anonymous protagonist used the tactic of providing an overwhelming mass of "evidence" on the assumption that no one would go to the trouble of verifying it. I had time to investigate four of his/her "facts" and disproved all of them. S/He also tried to deny or explain away My research (which shows an 80% +/- 4% prevalence of theatre for both Live and Cinema listings for the U.S.A.), and presented such a distorted analysis of a previous vote that s/he claimed that I had voted for "er" dramatic 18:59, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

BcRIPster asks: "why the heck is this page now "re". I call that it be changed back." It was never "Theater", unless I'm misreading something: check here for the oldest version in the page history. No need to inject my Br Eng spelling into this article! --Old Moonraker 22:02, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "true" origin

It seems possible that "teatr" is not only Greek, but existed in Persian even before 550BC; but this is a big theory, and should have a source (btw the claim doesnt even say Cyrus predates Greek theatre...), so until then, I put it here: The originality of this word is neither French not Greek. This word is Persian (pronounced Te'atr). Existing documents strongly show the use of this word more than 2500 years in Persian language. In the era of the Cyrus the great (the Persian King in around B.C. 500) there were a group of people who were responsible for constructing the senses of the war for ordinary people or others so that they could share their victories feelings as well as their experiences with the people who were back up or by any reasons could not participate in the war. This kind of narrative stories was called Te'atr in Persian. --Flammingo^Hey 20:01, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Theatre Reportage

In the last decade Theatre Reportage has proven very popular in Europe, Teatro di Nascosto is counted as the most known but also most active theatre group in this field. Annet Henneman is the most influencial figure in Theatre reportage. In 1997 Teatro di Nascosto which is based in Italy - Volterra started to collect stories about the people and the countries that were in problem or involved in war and repressing human rights like India, Iraq, Slovenia, Iran and Turkey.

Their work is crucial in creating new audiance to the theatre as they brought true story of people and different nationalities and write theatre plays and perform it in different countries of Europe in different languages.

Teatro di Nascosto is also the most known for their work in creating Acadimic of Theatre Reportage which they created a school in which they invited a large number of refugee and asylum seekers and the members of the Teatro di Nascosto lived with them and worked with them. Students were taught Drama lessons as well as Italian language and English language. 'Some theatre experts argue that actors should study all of the commonly taught acting methods to perfect their craft, such as the Meisner, Stanislavsky, Strasberg, and Hagen acting methods.' I am a disabled new user but the sentence I have quoted above is nonsense. It doesn't have even one citation and would need several. There are a huge number of interrelated 'methods' of acting but nobody would claim that a well-trained, experienced Stanislavskian Actor necessarily needs to study Meisner, or vice-versa, or Kathakali for that matter. Stewarpm 22:42, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

The latter is now called a weasle word, so readers are reminded the passage is unreliable.--Flammingo^Hey 08:21, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Additions: "Theatre Resources"

I am a new user so can't add it myself, however, there is a very good resource at www.playsonthenet.com for theatre goers, playwrights etc. Just thought it may be a good addition as I use it quite a lot. Theatre007 15:10, 24 July 2007

[edit] Awards in theatre

Some of these are not really notable. As a rough test, what would editors think if all those without an article (redlinks) were deleted? Googling before deletion, to avoid missing any serious ones, would be good. --Old Moonraker (talk) 19:55, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Withdrawing: I started on this, but now I'm dropping the proposal. The last six sections are a huge cruft magnet, notwithstanding the inline appeal to editors to keep to the notable, but once you start, where do you stop?

--Old Moonraker (talk) 08:39, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is there an English name for this?

There was a genre of play in 18/19th century Europe which was the precursor of the fantasy film, i.e., using stage technology to create a fantasy utopia where different mythologies were mixed for the masses. The only article I know is de:Zauberstück but is there an English name? --Rwst (talk) 16:47, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Masque has a little on this, but as it doesn't cover C19, and it wasn't "for the masses", it doesn't answer the question completely.

--Old Moonraker (talk) 17:58, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Types of theatre

The types section is a strange congeries of incomparable items - some refer to the mood, some to the mechanisms of production, some to the method of creation and some to culture in which the form arose.

I would like to reorganise this, and started making the change; but I think it is a big undertaking, but would like to consult on how best to do it. My suggestion is an introductory paragraph covering the classification and mentioning some examples (and also pointing out that the classification is not exclusive) and then subsections such as

• Types of mood (eg drama, comedy, farce, melodrama, absurdism, children's theatre, pantomime, horror)
• Types of intention (eg political theatre, theatre in education, satire)
• Types of presentation (eg musical theatre, opera, physical theatre, puppet theatre, dance, multi-media, mime)
• Types of preparation (eg devised theatre, improvisational theatre)
• Culturally specific theatre (eg Sanskrit theatre, Noh, Kabuki, Chinese opera, Kathak)

Some items fit into more than one of these, and some of the items in the current list I would count as subclasses of some I've mentioned above.

Opinions? --ColinFine (talk) 12:54, 17 February 2008 (UTC)