3,335 articles
Anwar Maqsood (انور مقصود)
Anwar Maqsood (انور مقصود), born 1935 in Hyderabad state, is a Pakistani playwright, satirist, TV host, and painter, creator of Aangan Terha, Fifty-Fifty, and Loose Talk, Hilal-e-Imtiaz recipient, not the 1970-born Jamshedpur poet of the same name.
Anyeint
Anyeint, also spelled anyein or anyint, is a Burmese traditional theatre genre combining dance and comedy, in which a female classical dancer alternates with male comedians; dancers once performed at the royal court of King Thibaw.
Anything Goes
Anything Goes is Cole Porter's 1934 Broadway musical comedy set aboard the SS American, with a book by Wodehouse and Bolton revised by Lindsay and Crouse, starring Ethel Merman, and existing in five libretto versions (1934, 1962, 1987, 2011, 2022).
Aoi Yamada (山田 葵)
Aoi Yamada (山田葵, AOI YAMADA), born 2000 in Matsumoto, Japan, is a Japanese dancer, choreographer, and actor who calls her art "expression." Known for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics closing ceremony solo, Kenshi Yonezu's Flamingo MV, and Perfect Days.
Aparna Nancherla
Aparna Nancherla (born 1982, Washington, D.C.) is an American stand-up comedian, actress, and writer of Indian descent, known for Corporate, BoJack Horseman, The Great North, The Standups, and the memoir Unreliable Narrator.
Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn (1640–1689), English Restoration playwright, poet, spy for Charles II, and novelist; first professional woman writer in England; wrote The Rover and Oroonoko.
Apollo Theater
The Apollo Theater, Harlem's historic venue at 253 W 125th St, opened in 1914 as a burlesque house and became the Apollo in 1934–1935. Famous for Amateur Night and launching Black music stars, it is now a nonprofit closed for a $65 million renovation reopening late 2026.
Apollo Theatre
Apollo Theatre (London) is a Grade II listed West End playhouse at 29 Shaftesbury Avenue, opened 21 February 1901, the first London theatre completed in the Edwardian era; 775 seats, Nimax-owned since 2005; distinct from the Apollo Victoria, Eventim Apollo, and Harlem Apollo.
Appalachian Spring
Appalachian Spring, also known by Copland's working title Ballet for Martha, is a 1944 one-act ballet by Martha Graham with music by Aaron Copland for thirteen instruments, premiered at the Library of Congress, winner of the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Applause (musical)
Applause (1970) is a Broadway musical by Charles Strouse, Lee Adams, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green, based on All About Eve; it ran 896 performances, won four Tonys including Best Musical, and starred Lauren Bacall.
Applied drama
Applied drama is process-based dramatic practice for participating communities rather than public audiences, using role play, improvisation and process drama; related to applied theatre, rooted in postwar UK and Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, with a contested impact-evaluation debate.
Aquaria (drag queen)
Aquaria is the stage name of Giovanni Palandrani, a Brooklyn-based American drag queen who won season 10 of RuPaul's Drag Race in June 2018, earning $100,000, and became the first drag queen to walk the Met Gala red carpet.
Arabic poetic drama
Arabic poetic drama (المسرح الشعري), also called the poetic play, is a genre of modern Arabic literature in which plays are written in verse, pioneered by Ahmad Shawqi in 1927.
Arabic political theatre
Arabic political theatre (المسرح السياسي العربي) is a current within modern Arab theater that stages political or social problems from a definite viewpoint, flourishing especially in the 1970s.
Arabic popular theatre
Arabic popular theatre (المسرح الشعبي) is the body of traditional, largely improvised performance forms of the Arab world, including shadow play, Karakoz farces, and the muhabbazun comic street players.
Arabic theatre
Arabic theatre (المسرح العربي) is the tradition of stage drama in the Arabic language, begun in the mid-1800s as a European import into Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt.
Arabic theatre of the absurd
Arabic theatre of the absurd (مسرح العبث العربي) is Arabic-language drama that adopted European absurdist techniques, reaching Arab playwrights in the 1960s through translations of Ionesco and Beckett.
Aragoto
Aragoto (荒事, "rough business") is a bold, exaggerated kabuki acting style created in Edo during the Genroku period by Ichikawa Danjūrō I, known for kumadori makeup and the mie pose.
Arcadia (play)
Arcadia is Tom Stoppard's 1993 play, premiered at the National Theatre's Lyttelton Theatre, set at Sidley Park in Derbyshire across 1809-1812 and the present, intertwining chaos theory, thermodynamics, landscape gardening, and Lord Byron.
Arden of Faversham
Arden of Faversham is an anonymous Elizabethan domestic tragedy, first published in 1592, dramatizing the real 1551 murder of Thomas Arden by his wife and her lover.
Ari Shaffir
Ari Shaffir (born 1974) is an American stand-up comedian and podcaster from New York, known for The Comedy Store years, This Is Not Happening, the specials Paid Regular, Double Negative, Jew, and America's Sweetheart, and the podcasts Skeptic Tank and You Be Trippin'.
Ariano Suassuna
Ariano Suassuna, full name Ariano Vilar Suassuna, was a Brazilian playwright, novelist, poet, and professor whose 1955 comedy O Auto da Compadecida became a classic of Brazilian theater.
Aries Spears
Aries Spears (born 1975, Chicago) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and impressionist, a MADtv cast member 1997–2005 across 198 episodes, known for Jay-Z, Denzel Washington, and Shaq impressions, albums I Ain't Scared! and Comedy Blueprint, and the Spears & Steinberg podcast.
Aristophanes (Ἀριστοφάνης)
Aristophanes was an Athenian playwright whose eleven surviving comedies combine imaginative plots, political satire, and literary criticism. His work is central to the surviving record of ancient Greek Old Comedy.
Arlene Phillips
Dame Arlene Phillips (born 1943, Manchester) is an English choreographer, theatre director, and TV judge who created the dance troupe Hot Gossip, choreographed Starlight Express and We Will Rock You, judged Strictly Come Dancing 2004-2008, and was made a Dame in 2021.
Arms and the Man
Arms and the Man, Shaw's 1894 three-act anti-romantic comedy set in the Serbo-Bulgarian War, premiered at London's Avenue Theatre, became his first commercial success, and inspired Oscar Straus's operetta The Chocolate Soldier.
Arnold Wesker
Arnold Wesker (1932–2016) was a British dramatist whose trilogy Chicken Soup with Barley, Roots, and I'm Talking About Jerusalem made him famous in the late 1950s.
Arsenio Hall
Arsenio Hall is an American comedian and talk show host best known for the late-night program The Arsenio Hall Show, which syndicated from 1989 to May 1994.
Art colony
An art colony, or artists' colony, is a community of artists such as painters, writers, and composers who live and work together in one place.
Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller (1915-2005), American playwright of Death of a Salesman and The Crucible; Pulitzer and Tony winner, HUAC defendant, PEN president 1965-69, archive at the Harry Ransom Center.