127 articles
Aminta
Aminta is a pastoral dramatic poem by Torquato Tasso, written for the Este court of Ferrara around 1573, telling of the shepherd Aminta's love for the nymph Silvia.
Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus
Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus: late-4th-century-BC Greek theatre in the Sanctuary of Asklepios, attributed by Pausanias to Polykleitos the Younger, with 14,000 seats, famed for its acoustics, and hosting the Athens and Epidaurus Festival since 1955.
Augusto Boal
Augusto Boal (Augusto Pinto Boal, 1931-2009), Brazilian director and creator of Theatre of the Oppressed (Teatro do Oprimido), including Forum Theatre and the spect-actor; arrested in 1971, exiled, returned 1984; methods spread to over 100 countries.
Berliner Ensemble
Berliner Ensemble (BE), also Theater am Schiffbauerdamm: German theatre company founded 1949 in East Berlin by Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel for epic theatre; based since 1954 at the Schiffbauerdamm, led since 2017 by Oliver Reese.
Bharata Muni
Bharata Muni is the sage traditionally credited with the Natyashastra, the Sanskrit treatise on theater, dance, and music dated between the 2nd century BCE and the 6th century CE.
Bourgeois tragedy
Bourgeois tragedy (German: Bürgerliches Trauerspiel) is a form of tragedy whose characters are private people in bourgeois settings, arising in the 18th century with Lessing's Miss Sara Sampson.
Brighella
Brighella: commedia dell'arte stock character, the cunning first zanni and scheming servant from Bergamo, opposite Arlecchino; green-trimmed livery, bearded half mask, later reformed by Goldoni.
Casa con dos puertas, mala es de guardar
Casa con dos puertas, mala es de guardar is a three-act cloak-and-sword comedy in verse by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, written around 1629 and first printed in Madrid in 1640.
Chester Mystery Plays
The Chester Mystery Plays are a cycle of medieval mystery plays from Chester, dramatizing the Bible from Creation to Last Judgment, performed by the city's craft guilds.
Chronicle play
The chronicle play, also called a dramatic chronicle (Russian: драматическая хроника), is a form of historical drama telling national events through public scenes rather than a single ruler's tragedy.
Classical unities
Classical unities, also called Aristotelian or three unities: unity of action, time, and place. A prescriptive drama rule formulated by 16th-century Italian critics, not Aristotle himself, enforced in French neoclassicism, and abandoned by Romantic and modern theater.
Comedia nueva
Comedia nueva (Spanish for "new comedy") is the theatrical formula created by Lope de Vega in the late 16th century that dominated the Spanish stage for over 150 years.
Comédie larmoyante
Comédie larmoyante was a genre of French 18th-century drama presenting touching, tearful situations in comic form, founded by Nivelle de La Chaussée in the 1730s.
Dan Leno
Dan Leno, born George Wild Galvin, was a British music-hall comedian and pantomime dame originator who starred in sixteen consecutive Drury Lane Christmas pantomimes from 1888.
Deus ex machina
Deus ex machina, Latin for "god from the machine" (Greek theos ek mechanes), is a plot device from ancient Greek theater where a crane lowered a god onstage to resolve the plot; now any contrived, unforeshadowed ending.
Devised theatre
Devised theatre, also called devising or collaborative creation, is a method of making performance in which a group develops an original work collaboratively, without a pre-existing script or playwright.
Dionysia (Διονύσια)
Dionysia (Διονύσια), the Attic festivals of Dionysus: the deme-level Rural Dionysia in Poseideon and the City or Great Dionysia in Elaphebolion, whose dramatic and dithyrambic competitions staged most surviving Greek drama.
Documentary and verbatim theatre
Documentary and verbatim theater is performance built from trial transcripts, interviews, and documents, beginning with Erwin Piscator in 1925; verbatim theater reproduces real people's exact words.
El arte nuevo de hacer comedias
El arte nuevo de hacer comedias is a 1609 verse treatise by Lope de Vega that set out the principles of the Spanish comedia nueva.
El caballero de Olmedo
El caballero de Olmedo (The Knight of Olmedo) is a tragicomedy by Lope de Vega in which the knight don Alonso is murdered by jealous rivals.
El castigo sin venganza
El castigo sin venganza ("Punishment without Revenge") is a tragedy by Lope de Vega about a duke's wife and his illegitimate son, finished in 1631.
El condenado por desconfiado
El condenado por desconfiado, also known as El mayor desconfiado, is a Spanish Golden Age theological drama published in 1635 and traditionally attributed to Tirso de Molina.
El desdén, con el desdén
El desdén, con el desdén is a Spanish Golden Age comedy by Agustín Moreto, first published in Madrid in 1654, where count Carlos wins the disdainful Diana by feigning disdain.
El vergonzoso en palacio
El vergonzoso en palacio (The Shy Man at Court) is a three-act verse comedy by the Spanish playwright Tirso de Molina, first published in 1624.
English Renaissance theatre
English Renaissance theatre, also called Elizabethan theatre, was the theatre of England from 1558 to 1642, spanning Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline phases, featuring the first professional actors, purpose-built playhouses such as the Theatre and the Globe, and playwrights including Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Jonson.
Epic theatre
Epic theatre (Episches Theater), or Brechtian/dialectical theatre, is Bertolt Brecht's anti-illusionary, episodic political theatre using the Verfremdungseffekt, building on Erwin Piscator's 1920s stage innovations.
Expressionism (theatre)
Expressionist theatre: early 20th-century German non-realistic drama conveying inner emotion via distortion, Stationendrama structure, typified unnamed characters, stylized acting; key figures Sorge, Toller, Kaiser, Hasenclever.
Fabula palliata
Fabula palliata is the Latin comic genre of Roman comedies staged with Greek characters, settings, and dress, adapting Greek New Comedy, as in the surviving plays of Plautus and Terence.
Fabula togata
Fabula togata, meaning "drama in a toga," was a genre of Roman comedy that portrayed Roman characters in Roman settings, in contrast to the Greek-dressed fabula palliata.
Feast of Fools
Feast of Fools (fête des fous, festum stultorum): medieval liturgical feast of the Circumcision on 1 January in which subdeacons led worship; developed in northern France, condemned 1435–1445, later reassessed as orderly liturgy.