3,335 articles
Turkish playwrights
Turkish playwrights are writers of staged drama in the Turkish language, a tradition beginning with İbrahim Şinasi's 1859 Şair Evlenmesi and continuing through republican playwrights who built a national repertoire.
Turkish State Theatres
Turkish State Theatres (Devlet Tiyatroları) is Turkey's national state theater institution, founded by law in 1949, now running 64 stages and drawing over 2 million spectators a year.
Tutejšyja
Tutejšyja (Тутэйшыя, "people from here") is the historic self-designation of locals in the Belarusian-Lithuanian borderlands, also the name of Janka Kupala's 1922 play and a 1980s writers' society.
Tutu (clothing)
Tutu: the layered tulle skirt worn by ballet dancers, from Marie Taglioni's 1832 Romantic tutu in La Sylphide to the hooped classical pancake and Balanchine's powder puff styles.
Twelfth Night
Twelfth Night, or What You Will is Shakespeare's comedy of shipwrecked twins, disguise, and mistaken identity in Illyria, likely written 1601, first performed 2 February 1602 at Middle Temple, and first printed in the 1623 First Folio.
Twentieth-century theatre
Twentieth-century theatre: the 1900–2000 theatrical culture of Europe and North America, also called modern theatre, marked by realism's mainstream dominance, the avant-garde retheatricalization of roughly 1900–1930, political and workers' theatre, stage censorship until 1968 in Britain, and electric-light scenography.
Twerking
Twerking: a dance of rapid hip thrusts and buttock shaking in a low squat, from the New Orleans bounce scene (DJ Jubilee, 1993); the word itself is attested from 1820.
Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)
Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) is a two-person British musical by Jim Barne and Kit Buchan about Brit Dougal and New Yorker Robin. Kiln 2023, West End 2024, Broadway Longacre 2025, eight Tony nominations.
Twyla Tharp
Twyla Tharp (born 1941, Portland, Indiana) is an American choreographer and dancer, founder of Twyla Tharp Dance, creator of Deuce Coupe, Push Comes to Shove, and In the Upper Room, and a crossover pioneer of ballet, modern dance, Broadway, and film.
Tybalt
Tybalt is Juliet's hot-tempered cousin in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, a famed rapier duelist nicknamed Prince of Cats who kills Mercutio and is slain by Romeo, triggering the tragedy.
Tyrone Guthrie
Sir Tyrone Guthrie (1900–1971), Anglo-Irish theatre director, pioneer of the thrust stage, founding artistic director of the Stratford Festival (1953) and the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis (1963), knighted 1961.
Ubhayabhisarika
Ubhayabhisarika (उभयाभिसारिका) is a Sanskrit one-act monologue play attributed to Vararuci, in which a single actor narrates a walk through the courtesans' quarter to reconcile two estranged lovers.
Ubu Roi
Ubu Roi (Ubu roi) is Alfred Jarry's 1896 five-act burlesque play about Père Ubu, who seizes the throne of Poland. Its premiere at the Théâtre de l'Œuvre on 10 December 1896 caused a scandal with the word "merdre", and it became a precursor of Dada, Surrealism and the Theatre of the Absurd.
Uncle Vanya (Дядя Ваня)
Uncle Vanya (Дядя Ваня) is Anton Chekhov's four-act play subtitled Scenes from Country Life, reworked from The Wood Demon, published 1897 and premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1899 under Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko.
Under Milk Wood
Under Milk Wood is Dylan Thomas's 1953 radio play for voices, set in the fictional Welsh village of Llareggub over one day; first broadcast by the BBC Third Programme on 25 January 1954 with Richard Burton, it won the 1954 Prix Italia.
Under the Eaves of Shanghai
Under the Eaves of Shanghai (上海屋檐下) is a 1937 three-act tragicomedy by Chinese playwright Xia Yan, set among five households in a Shanghai lane house.
Unity Phelan
Unity Phelan (Unity Sickles Phelan), American ballet dancer, principal with New York City Ballet since October 2021 after joining the corps in 2013; known for Wheeldon's American Rhapsody, Balanchine repertory, Swan Lake debut at 30, and roles in John Wick 3 and Étoile.
Unity Theatre, London
Unity Theatre, London: left-wing theatre club founded 5 January 1936 by the Rebel Players and Red Radio from the Workers' Theatre Movement; staged political drama at Goldington Street until fire destroyed it in 1975; legacy held by Unity Theatre Trust.
Uparupaka
Uparupaka (उपरूपक, literally "a lesser drama") is the Sanskrit dramaturgical term for minor drama and dance-drama forms, contrasted with the ten major rupakas of Bharata's Natyashastra and emphasizing music, dance, and gesture; Vishvanatha's Sahityadarpana recognizes eighteen.
Urinetown
Urinetown: The Musical, by Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis, is a 2001 Brechtian satire about a drought-stricken town where the Urine Good Company charges citizens to pee; it won three Tony Awards.
Uta Hagen
Uta Hagen (1919–2004), German-born American Broadway actress and master acting teacher at HB Studio, New York; Tony winner for The Country Girl and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, author of Respect for Acting and creator of the object exercises and substitution technique.
Utpal Dutt
Utpal Dutt (উৎপল দত্ত, 1929–1993), Indian actor, director, and playwright; founder of the Little Theatre Group (1949) and maker of Marxist political theatre in Bengal, also known for Bengali and Hindi film roles.
V. T. Bhattathiripad
V. T. Bhattathiripad (1896–1982) was a Kerala social reformer, dramatist, and writer who campaigned against casteism among Namboothiri Brahmins and wrote the landmark 1929 play Adukkalayil Ninnu Arangathekku.
Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet (Академия русского балета имени А. Я. Вагановой)
The Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet (Академия русского балета имени А. Я. Вагановой) is the state ballet school of St. Petersburg, founded in 1738, training dancers for the Mariinsky Theatre.
Valarie Pettiford
Valarie Pettiford (born 1960, Queens, New York) is an American actor, dancer, and singer. A Bob Fosse Broadway dancer, Tony-nominated for Fosse (1999), known as Big Dee Dee on Half & Half and Emily Mather in A Discovery of Witches, and a founding Verdon Fosse Legacy reconstructeur.
Valentina (drag queen)
Valentina (James Andrew Leyva, born 1991, Bell, California) is an American drag performer of Mexican heritage, a RuPaul's Drag Race season 9 and All Stars 4 contestant, Rent: Live's Angel, Drag Race Mexico co-host, and 2026 Broadway Columbia.
Vanessa Vanjie Mateo
Vanessa Vanjie Mateo, also Miss Vanjie, is an American drag performer, drag daughter of Alexis Mateo, first eliminated on Drag Race season 10 with a viral backwards "Miss Vanjie" exit, then 5th on season 11 and All Stars 9 runner-up.
Vasant Kanetkar
Vasant Kanetkar (वसंत शंकर कानेटकर, 1922–2001) was a Marathi playwright, novelist, and professor from Maharashtra whose roughly forty plays made him a leading commercial dramatist.
Vasily Petrenko (Василий Эдуардович Петренко)
Vasily Petrenko (Василий Эдуардович Петренко, born 1976, Leningrad) is a Russian conductor, Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra since 2021 and former chief conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (2006–2021) and Oslo Philharmonic (2013–2020); unrelated to Kirill Petrenko and to the Another World VR entrepreneur of the same name.
Vaslav Nijinsky
Vaslav Nijinsky (Вацлав Нижинский), Russian dancer and choreographer of Polish descent, star of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes; choreographed L'Après-midi d'un faune (1912) and Le Sacre du printemps (1913); schizophrenia ended his career in 1919.