3,335 articles
Mime artist
Mime artist: wordless performer telling stories through body, hand and facial movement, from Greek mimos. Key figures Decroux, Marceau, Lecoq; distinct from British pantomime, clowning and silent film comedy.
Minack Theatre
The Minack Theatre is an open-air theater carved into the granite cliffs above Porthcurno Bay in Cornwall, England, built largely by Rowena Cade from 1931 and seating about 700.
Minna von Barnhelm
Minna von Barnhelm is a five-act comedy by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, published and premiered in 1767, set after the Seven Years' War, in which an officer's exaggerated sense of honor nearly destroys his engagement.
Minnie Pearl
Minnie Pearl was the stage character of Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon, an American country comedian who performed on the Grand Ole Opry for more than fifty years.
Minstrel show
Minstrel show: 19th-century American blackface theater founded by T.D. Rice's Jim Crow (1828-30) and the Virginia Minstrels (1843); dominant US entertainment until vaudeville eclipsed it in the 1890s, leaving lasting racial stereotypes in popular culture.
Mira Mendelson
Mira Mendelson (Mira Alexandrovna Mendelson-Prokofieva, 1915-1968), Soviet writer and librettist, second wife of Sergei Prokofiev; co-author of the librettos of War and Peace, Betrothal in a Monastery, The Story of a Real Man, and The Tale of the Stone Flower.
Miracle in the Gorbals
Miracle in the Gorbals is Robert Helpmann's 1944 one-act ballet to Arthur Bliss's score, premiered by Sadler's Wells Ballet with Michael Benthall's scenario and Edward Burra designs; a Christ-like Stranger revives a suicide in a Glasgow slum and is murdered by a razor gang.
Miroslav Krleža
Miroslav Krleža (1893–1981), Croatian writer and encyclopedist of Zagreb, author of Povratak Filipa Latinovicza, Balade Petrice Kerempuha, and Zastave, founder of the Lexicographic Institute bearing his name.
Mischief Theatre
Mischief Theatre is a British comedy theatre company founded in 2008 by LAMDA students Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields, creators of The Play That Goes Wrong, running at the Duchess Theatre since 2014, and the BBC's The Goes Wrong Show.
Mise-en-scène
Mise-en-scène, French for "placing on stage", is the staging of a theatrical or film work: the organization of actors, scenery, lighting, costume, and framing under a directorial point of view, coined around 1802 and modernized by Antoine in 1887.
Miss Cosmo 2026
Miss Cosmo 2026 is the third edition of the Vietnam-hosted international beauty pageant by Unicorp and UniMedia, with 90+ countries, theme "Vietnam – Festination", and a Grand Finale on January 16, 2027 at World Tea Resort Nha Trang – Tri Nguyen Island, Khanh Hoa.
Miss Julie
Miss Julie (Fröken Julie) is August Strindberg's 1888 one-act naturalistic tragedy of class and sex, set on Midsummer's Eve in a count's kitchen, premiered in Copenhagen in 1889 and endlessly adapted for stage, film, and ballet.
Miss Universe 2015
Miss Universe 2015, the 64th edition held December 20, 2015 at The AXIS in Las Vegas, won by Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach of the Philippines after host Steve Harvey mistakenly crowned Miss Colombia Ariadna Gutiérrez live on Fox.
Misty Copeland
Misty Copeland, American ballet dancer born in Kansas City and raised in San Pedro, California; first African American woman promoted to principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre (June 30, 2015), author of Life in Motion, founder of the Misty Copeland Foundation, retired from ABT in October 2025.
Misua (drag queen)
Misua (Jason Elvie Go Ty, 1998-2026) was a Filipino drag artist and graphic designer from Cagayan de Oro, a Haus of LaFeya member cast for Drag Race Philippines Season 4, who died in her sleep during filming.
Mitch Hedberg
Mitch Hedberg, full name Mitchell Lee Hedberg, was an American stand-up comedian from St. Paul, Minnesota, known for surreal one-liners in a laid-back drawl until his death in 2005.
Mitzi Shore
Mitzi Shore (1930-2018), American comedy club owner who co-founded and ran The Comedy Store on the Sunset Strip from 1972, created the Door Guy and Paid Regular system, and weathered the 1979 comedians' strike.
Mmanwu
Mmanwu (also Mmanwụ or Mmonwu) is the Igbo masquerade tradition of southeastern Nigeria, in which performers embody ancestors or spirits and historically served judicial roles.
Mo Gilligan
Mo Gilligan (born 1988), also known as Mo the Comedian, is a British stand-up comedian and presenter from south London who rose via viral character videos, the Coupla Cans tour, The Lateish Show, three Netflix specials, and hosting the Brit Awards.
Modern dance
Modern dance: concert dance form born in the early 20th century as a rebellion against ballet, pioneered by Isadora Duncan, Loie Fuller, and Martha Graham; developed named techniques, 1960s postmodern offshoots, and today's contemporary fusions.
Modern Egyptian theatre
Modern Egyptian theatre is the Arabic-language, Western-style stage drama that took root in Egypt from the second half of the nineteenth century and led the Arab world.
Modern Tamil theatre
Modern Tamil theatre is the tradition of scripted Tamil drama, generally dated from 1870, when folk performance was reshaped by Western plays and Parsi theater, with pioneers Pammal Sambanda Mudaliar and Sankaradas Swamigal.
Modernist theatre
Modernist theatre: dramatic work from the 1880s to mid-1900s under modernism, covering Naturalism, Symbolism, Futurism, Expressionism, and later absurdism and epic theatre, by Ibsen, Strindberg, Pirandello, Brecht, and Beckett.
Mohiniyattam (മോഹിനിയാട്ടം)
Mohiniyattam (മോഹിനിയാട്ടം), the classical lasya-style solo dance of Kerala, meaning dance of the enchantress; codified under Swati Thirunal, revived at Kerala Kalamandalam from 1930, with four traditions: Kalamandalam, Kalyanikutty Amma, Bharati Shivaji, Kanak Rele.
Moira Shearer
Moira Shearer (1926–2006), born Moira Shearer King, British ballerina of the Sadler's Wells Ballet and actress, famed as Victoria Page in Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes (1948).
Molière
Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622–1673), French actor, troupe leader, and comic playwright; author of Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope, and Le Bourgeois gentilhomme; director of the King's Troupe under Louis XIV; French is called his language.
Monique Marvez
Monique Marvez, American stand-up comedian and radio host born in Miami to a Cuban-Puerto Rican mother and Venezuelan father; four Showtime specials, KFI 640 host, and 2024's #1 Dry Bar Comedy special.
Monologue
Monologue (Greek monos + logos): a long uninterrupted speech by one person, especially a single actor in drama, distinct from the soliloquy; also a solo play form and, as the Browningesque dramatic monologue, a lyric poem genre.
Moon on a Rainbow Shawl
Moon on a Rainbow Shawl is a three-act play by Trinidadian dramatist Errol John, set in a Port of Spain tenement yard, which won the Observer playwriting competition in 1957.
Moonwalk (dance)
The moonwalk, originally the backslide, is a backward-gliding street-dance illusion popularized by Michael Jackson at Motown 25 in 1983; earlier performers include Bill Bailey (1955) and Cab Calloway.