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Vatan yahut Silistre
Vatan yahut Silistre ("Fatherland, or Silistra") is a four-act Ottoman Turkish play by Namık Kemal, first staged in Istanbul in 1873, that made patriotism a central idea of Turkish literature.
Vaudeville
Vaudeville: American variety theater of the 1880s–1920s, a bill of seven to ten unrelated live acts; peaked at 5 million weekly attendees, run by Keith-Albee and Orpheum circuits, killed by radio and talkies.
Vedette (cabaret)
Vedette: French cabaret and music-hall term for the top-billed star performer, from Italian vedetta (watchtower). Covers café-concert origins, vedette américaine and vedette anglaise billing, and the vedette/star distinction.
Venice Preserv'd
Venice Preserv'd is a 1682 tragedy by Thomas Otway in which an impoverished nobleman betrays a plot against the Venetian Senate to save his wife.
Venisamhara
Venisanhara (वेणीसंहारम्, Veṇīsaṃhāra), meaning "the binding of the braid," is a six-act Sanskrit drama by Bhatta Narayana that dramatizes the Mahabharata war through Bhima's vengeance; it is his only surviving play.
Ventriloquism
Ventriloquism, from Latin venter and loqui (belly-speaking), is the art of making one's voice appear to come from a dummy or other source; its perceptual basis is the ventriloquism effect, visual capture of sound location, studied since Eurykles of Athens to Edgar Bergen and modern labs.
Vertep
Vertep, also called shopka or batlejka, is a portable Christmas puppet theater of East Slavic peoples, performing nativity drama and comic scenes in a decorated two-tier box.
Vestido de Noiva
Vestido de Noiva (Wedding Dress) is a 1943 three-act play by Brazilian playwright Nelson Rodrigues, following Alaíde, who relives her memories after being struck by a car.
Vic Michaelis
Vic Michaelis, also known as Victoria Michaelis, is a nonbinary American-Canadian comedian, actor, and improviser who hosts Dropout's improvised interview show Very Important People and stars as Cheryl Symanski in Peacock's Ponies.
Victor Borge
Victor Borge (Børge Rosenbaum, 1909–2000), Danish-born pianist and comedian who fled the 1940 Nazi occupation to the US, starred on Bing Crosby's radio show, and set the Broadway one-man-show record with Comedy in Music, 849 sold-out performances.
Victoria Chaplin
Victoria Chaplin (Victoria Thierrée Chaplin, born 1951, Santa Monica) is a British circus performer and director, daughter of Charlie Chaplin, co-founder of Le Cirque Bonjour, Le Cirque Imaginaire, and Le Cirque Invisible with Jean-Baptiste Thierrée.
Victoria Jackson
Victoria Jackson (born 1959, Miami) is an American comedian and actress, an SNL cast member 1986-1992 known for handstand-and-poetry bits and UHF, later a Tea Party commentator, author, and breast cancer advocate.
Victoria Wood
Victoria Wood (1953-2016), English comedian, writer, actor, pianist and singer from Prestwich, Manchester; creator of As Seen On TV, dinnerladies and Acorn Antiques; died of cancer aged 62.
Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 2025
The 2025 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, held October 15, 2025 in New York (Steiner Studios, Brooklyn Navy Yard), was the second revived edition under CEO Hillary Super, streamed on Prime Video with performers Karol G, Missy Elliott, Madison Beer, and Twice, and opened by a pregnant Jasmine Tookes.
Viewpoints
Viewpoints (Six Viewpoints, SSTEMS) is a performance training method created by Mary Overlie in 1970s postmodern dance and adapted by Anne Bogart and Tina Landau into nine physical plus vocal Viewpoints, published in The Viewpoints Book (2005).
Vijay Tendulkar (विजय धोंडोपंत तेंडुलकर)
Vijay Dhondopant Tendulkar (विजय धोंडोपंत तेंडुलकर, 1928–2008), Marathi playwright and screenwriter; wrote Shantata! Court Chalu Aahe, Sakharam Binder, Ghashiram Kotwal; transformed modern Indian theatre.
Violante Doria
Violante Doria, born Violante Facchinetti, an Italian noblewoman who married Giovan Battista Pamphilj in 1671, bringing the Facchinetti family archive and paintings into the Pamphilj patrimony and later the Doria Pamphilj Historical Archives.
Visitatio Sepulchri
Visitatio Sepulchri is a medieval Easter liturgical ceremony, first recorded in tenth-century France, in which clerics or nuns re-enacted the three Marys' visit to Christ's tomb.
Vito Coppola
Vito Coppola (born 1992, Eboli, Italy) is an Italian ballroom and Latin dancer, 11-time Italian Latin American champion, Strictly Come Dancing 2023 winner with Ellie Leach, and 2024 Celebrity MasterChef UK winner.
Vittorio Angelone
Vittorio Angelone (born 1996) is a Belfast-born Italian-Northern Irish stand-up comedian, podcast co-host of Mike & Vittorio's Guide to Parenting, Edinburgh Best Newcomer nominee for Translations, and star of BBC NI's Rewarding.
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (Владимир Владимирович Маяковский, 1893–1930), Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, and painter of Russian Futurism: cubo-futurist manifesto signer, author of The Cloud in Trousers, Mystery-Bouffe, The Bedbug, and The Bathhouse, died by suicide in Moscow in 1930.
Vogue (dance)
Vogue, or voguing, is the stylized Harlem ballroom dance created by Black and Latino LGBTQ communities in the 1960s, with Old Way, New Way, and Vogue Femme styles, five elements, and Houses, popularized worldwide by Madonna's 1990 hit.
Volksbühnenbewegung
Volksbühnenbewegung (people's stage movement) is the German movement of theatergoer associations that buy tickets in bulk, begun with the Freie Volksbühne in Berlin in 1890.
Volksschauspiel
Volksschauspiel, the German folk play, is theater by laypeople for lay audiences in the vernacular, covering Passion plays, parlor plays, and peasant comedies, and remains living practice especially in Tirol.
Volksstück
The Volksstück (plural Volksstücke) is a German-language drama genre that arose in Vienna in the late eighteenth century, using dialect and comedy for realistic, critical pictures of society.
Volpone
Volpone is a satirical comedy by Ben Jonson, written in 1606 and set in Venice, in which a rich trickster feigns illness to swindle legacy hunters.
Vomitorium
Vomitorium (plural vomitoria), Latin for amphitheater or theater entrance passages through which spectators 'spewed forth' into their seats; never a Roman vomiting room, a myth that arose in 19th-century writing.
Vsevolod Meyerhold (Всеволод Эмильевич Мейерхольд)
Vsevolod Emilievich Meyerhold (Всеволод Эмильевич Мейерхольд), born Karl Kazimir Theodor Mayergold, Russian and Soviet theatre director, MAT actor, creator of biomechanics, head of the Meyerhold State Theatre (1920–1938), executed 1940, rehabilitated 1955.
W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert (William Schwenck Gilbert, 1836–1911), English dramatist, librettist, and Bab Ballads poet, wrote the words for fourteen Savoy comic operas with composer Arthur Sullivan, including H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado; knighted 1907.
Wada Chirebandi
Wada Chirebandi (वाडा चिरेबंदी) is a Marathi play by Mahesh Elkunchwar, first staged in 1985, opening his trilogy about a feudal family in a crumbling wada mansion in Vidarbha.