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Ciro's
Ciro's was a Hollywood celebrity nightclub at 8433 Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood, opened by Billy Wilkerson in January 1940 and run by Herman Hover 1942-1957. Not the 1934 Hollywood Boulevard Ciro's; later It's Boss and, since 1972, The Comedy Store.
Cirque du Soleil
Cirque du Soleil, the Canadian (Quebec) contemporary circus company founded by Guy Laliberté in 1984, known for animal-free theatrical acrobatic shows, Las Vegas resident productions, and over 400 million spectators worldwide.
Citadel Theatre
Citadel Theatre (Edmonton, Alberta): major Canadian not-for-profit professional theatre founded 1965 by Shoctor and colleagues; moved to a five-theatre Diamond, Myers and Wilkin complex in 1976, Canada's largest when completed in 1989.
City comedy
City comedy is a genre of satirical English Renaissance drama set in London among citizens, usurers, prostitutes, and swindlers, flourishing chiefly under James I; leading dramatists include Middleton, Jonson, and Dekker.
Claire van Kampen
Claire van Kampen (1953-2025), British composer, playwright, and director; founding Director of Theatre Music at Shakespeare's Globe and wife of Mark Rylance; wrote Farinelli and the King, a Tony-nominated play.
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.
Claudia O'Doherty
Claudia O'Doherty (born 1983, Sydney) is an Australian actress, writer, and comedian, daughter of Reg Mombassa. Known for Bertie in Netflix's Love, Mary in Our Flag Means Death, Jillian in Killing It, and her Edinburgh show The Telescope.
Clizia
Clizia is a prose comedy in five acts by Niccolò Machiavelli, his second and last surviving original play, adapted from Plautus' Casina and first performed in Florence in 1525.
Clown
Clown: a comic performer defined by physical comedy, an eccentric persona, and direct audience complicity. Also known as circus clown, Auguste, red nose. Descends from ancient jesters, consolidated in 19th-century circus, with training lineages of Lecoq, Gaulier, and Pochinko.
Clue: On Stage
Clue: On Stage is Sandy Rustin's stage farce adapted from Jonathan Lynn's 1985 film Clue and the Hasbro board game, with Hunter Foster and Eric Price; premiered 2017 at Bucks County Playhouse, toured North America, over 4,000 productions.
Colin Jost
Colin Jost (born 1982, Staten Island) is an American comedian and writer, SNL co-head writer and Weekend Update co-anchor since 2014 with Michael Che, the segment's longest-running host, memoirist of A Very Punchable Face, and Pop Culture Jeopardy! host.
Colin Mochrie
Colin Mochrie (born 1957, Kilmarnock, Scotland) is a Canadian improvisational comedian, a regular on British and American Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Second City Toronto alumnus, touring partner of Brad Sherwood, and co-creator of Hyprov.
Colin Quinn
Colin Quinn (born 1959) is a Brooklyn-born stand-up comedian and actor, former SNL Weekend Update anchor (1998–2000), host of Tough Crowd (2002–2004), and creator of themed one-man shows like Long Story Short and Small Talk.
Colleen Dewhurst
Colleen Dewhurst (1924-1991; some sources say 1926), Canadian-born American stage and screen actress; two Tonys (All the Way Home, A Moon for the Misbegotten), four Emmys, O'Neill interpreter, Actors' Equity president 1985-1991.
Colm Wilkinson
Colm Wilkinson (born 1944), Irish tenor known as C.T. Wilkinson, originated Jean Valjean in Les Misérables (London 1985, Broadway 1987) and the Toronto Phantom; also Evita's original Che, Eurovision 1978, The Tudors.
Color-blind casting
Color-blind casting means casting performers without regard to race or ethnicity, also called non-traditional casting. Coined in 1970s American theatre via Joseph Papp and the 1986 NTCP; criticized by August Wilson and largely replaced by color-conscious casting.
Columbine (stock character)
Columbine (Italian Colombina, "Little Dove") is the saucy servetta of commedia dell'arte, later the wife of Harlequin in French pantomime and English harlequinade, created as a Paris type by Catherine Biancolelli (1683–1697).
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.
Comedian
A comedian is a performer or writer whose job is making people laugh, working in stand-up, improv, sketch, or writing. Distinguished by live performance forms, vaudeville-to-club stand-up history, timing craft, and precarious pay.
Comedic genres
Comedic genres, also called comedy genres, are categories of comedy such as slapstick, satire, farce, parody, and romantic comedy, each defined by its source of humor.
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.
Comédie-ballet
Comédie-ballet is a 17th-century French genre blending spoken comedy with music and dance, created by Molière and Lully and confined largely to their 1661 to 1671 collaboration.
Comédie-Française
The Comédie-Française, also called the Théâtre-Français or Maison de Molière, is France's national theater, founded by Louis XIV in 1680 and resident at the Salle Richelieu in Paris since 1799.
Comedy
Comedy, from Greek kōmōidia, is a drama and entertainment genre meant to be funny, usually ending happily. It arose in 6th-century BCE Greece with Aristophanes and Menander, contrasts with tragedy, and is explained by superiority, relief, and incongruity theories of humor.
Comedy Central Roast
Comedy Central Roast: American televised celebrity insult-comedy series (1998-2019), from Friars Club telecasts to in-house roasts from Denis Leary (2003) to Alec Baldwin (2019), with international adaptations and a Netflix successor.
Comedy of humours
The comedy of humours is a form of satirical drama, fashionable in late 16th-century England, in which each character is dominated by a single trait, or "humour".
Comedy of manners
Comedy of manners: realistic satirical comedy of the Restoration period (1660–1700) mocking the manners of a sophisticated artificial society; also called Restoration comedy; defined by wit, stock characters like the fop, and contrast with Jonson's comedy of humours.
Commedia dell'arte
Commedia dell'arte: Italian professional improvised theatre with stock masked characters (Arlecchino, Pantalone, Pulcinella), arising mid-sixteenth century, earliest company Padua 1545, ending with the Goldoni-Gozzi reforms of the 1750s.
Community theatre
Community theatre: locally based, volunteer-run noncommercial theatre serving a defined community. Arose from the US Little Theatre Movement (1912–1925); term coined by Louise Burleigh in 1917; in the UK, distinct applied-theatre meaning.
Compañía Argentina de Mimos
Compañía Argentina de Mimos: mime company founded in 1959 by Roberto Escobar and Igón Lerchundi (with Eduardo Hermida), toured the Americas and Europe, appeared at the 1962 Berlin Pantomime Festival with Marcel Marceau, and founded the MimoTeatro Escobar-Lerchundi in 1973; distinct from Ángel Elizondo's Compañía Argentina de Mimo.