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Igbo masquerade satirical drama (Ekpe and Okonko)
Igbo masquerade satirical drama is a masked performance tradition of southeastern Nigeria, where the Ekpe festival and Okonko society masquerade use satire to enforce community norms.
Ike Barinholtz
Ike Barinholtz (born 1977, Chicago) is an American actor, comedian, and writer known for MADtv, Morgan Tookers on The Mindy Project, co-writing Central Intelligence, directing The Oath, and Emmy-nominated Sal Saperstein in The Studio.
Iliza Shlesinger
Iliza Shlesinger (born 1983), also Iliza Vie Shlesinger, is an American comedian, actress, and host who won Last Comic Standing season 6 in 2008, released six Netflix specials plus A Different Animal (2025), and wrote Good On Paper.
Illinoise
Illinoise: dance musical based on Sufjan Stevens' 2005 album Illinois, directed and choreographed by Justin Peck with Jackie Sibblies Drury. Premiered 2024 at Chicago Shakespeare, won 2024 Tony for Best Choreography, returns to Chicago Feb–Mar 2027.
Imperial Theatre
Imperial Theatre names several venues: the Shuberts' 1923 Broadway musical house at 249 West 45th Street (1,445 seats), the 1913 National Historic Site in Saint John, New Brunswick, and theatres in Augusta, Sarnia, Walsall, Ottawa, Vancouver, and Philadelphia.
Impresario
Impresario: organizer and manager of public entertainments, from Italian impresario (impresa, 'undertaking'); English from 1746. Originally the opera-house manager of 18th-century Italy, later an artist's agent; examples include Diaghilev and Händel.
Improvisation
Improvisation, also known as extemporisation or improvising, is the creation of performance without a prepared script, traceable to Viola Spolin's Theater Games in 1930s Chicago.
Improvisational theatre
Improvisational theatre (improv, impro): unscripted live performance creating scenes and dialogue on the spot. Modern form founded via Viola Spolin's theater games, the 1955 Compass Players, The Second City, and Keith Johnstone's Theatresports; spans short-form games, longform like the Harold, and applied improv in education and healthcare.
In Search of Joy
In Search of Joy (В поисках радости) is a two-act play by Soviet Russian dramatist Viktor Rozov, written in 1957 and known for the "Rozov boys" idealists it inspired.
In the Heights
In the Heights is Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes's Tony-winning 2008 Broadway musical about Washington Heights' Dominican community, which ran 1,184 performances, won four Tonys, was a Pulitzer finalist, and became a 2021 Jon M. Chu film criticized over Afro-Latino casting.
In-yer-face theatre
In-yer-face theatre is a label for the provocative 1990s British drama defined by extreme language and emotional frankness, named widely by critic Aleks Sierz in his 2001 book.
Ina Césaire
Ina Césaire (1942–2025) was a Martinican ethnographer and playwright, daughter of Aimé and Suzanne Césaire, whose stage work is the most extensive by any French Caribbean woman playwright.
Inao
Inao (อิเหนา) is a Thai court dance-drama (lakhon nai) in verse, best known in the version composed by King Rama II in the early nineteenth century.
Independent Theatre Pakistan
Independent Theatre Pakistan (ITP), a Lahore theatre company and performing arts organization founded in 2012 by Azeem Hamid, staging Urdu, Punjabi, and English productions of writers such as Manto and running a youth-centered arts program.
Indian classical dance
Indian classical dance: the eight Sangeet Natak Akademi-recognized forms (Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Kathakali, Kuchipudi, Odissi, Manipuri, Mohiniyattam, Sattriya), their Natyashastra foundations, and their modern codification.
Indian English theatre
Indian English theatre is theatre in English by Indian playwrights, begun under colonial rule; Krishna Mohan Banerji's The Persecuted of 1831 was the first play.
Indian People's Theatre Association
The Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) is an all-India cultural organization founded in Bombay in 1943, whose people's theater movement shaped modern Indian theater, film, and music.
Indigenous theatre
Indigenous theater is performance created by Indigenous peoples, including First Nations, Métis, Native American, Aboriginal Australian, and Māori artists, spanning traditional practices and contemporary stage work made since colonization.
Indigenous theatre in North America
Indigenous theater in North America is theater created by Native American and First Nations artists in the United States and Canada through dedicated companies, festivals, and training.
Innamorati
Innamorati: the young, unmasked lover characters of commedia dell'arte, borrowed from courtly love and commedia erudita; their obstructed courtship forms the plot while vecchi oppose and zanni aid them.
Ins Choi
Ins Choi, also known as Insub Choi, is a Korean Canadian playwright, actor, and screenwriter born in South Korea in 1974 and raised in Toronto, best known for creating Kim's Convenience.
Inside No. 9 Stage/Fright
Inside No. 9 Stage/Fright is a 2025 black comedy horror stage play by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, adapted from their BBC anthology Inside No. 9; it ran at Wyndham's Theatre and toured the UK, with celebrity hostage guests and a theatre-ghost plot.
Inter Alia (play)
Inter Alia is a 2025 play by Suzie Miller, follow-up to Prima Facie, about judge Jessica Parks whose son is accused of rape. Premiered at the National Theatre with Rosamund Pike, won a 2026 Olivier, transfers to Broadway in 2026.
Interactive theatre
Interactive theatre (also medspilsteater, Mitspieltheater) is live performance in which audience members participate, choose, or co-create, breaking the actor-spectator barrier; spans forum, playback, participatory, immersive, and digital forms.
Interlude
An interlude is a short English dramatic piece of the 15th and 16th centuries that grew out of the morality play, introducing realistic characters and farcical humor.
International Affiliation of Writers Guilds
The International Affiliation of Writers Guilds is an international organization of professional screenwriters' guilds. It represents approximately 65,000 writers across 15 member guilds in 13 countries.
International Association of Theatre Critics
The International Association of Theatre Critics, in French Association Internationale des Critiques de Théâtre, is a non-profit organization of drama, opera, and dance critics founded in Paris in 1956.
International School of Theatre Anthropology
International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA), founded 1979 by Eugenio Barba in Holstebro, Denmark: an itinerant school studying performers' pre-expressive stage presence across traditions, distinct from ISTA Global schools charity.
Into the Woods
Into the Woods is a musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine that explores the consequences of wishes. It premiered in 1986 and won three Tony Awards.
Ion Cojar
Ion Cojar (1931–2009), Romanian theatre director, acting theorist and professor, founder of a Romanian acting method ('acting is a way of thinking'), director of Teatrul Mic and of the Bucharest National Theatre, author of O poetică a artei actorului.