3,335 articles
Slam Frank
Slam Frank is a satirical Off-Broadway musical by Andrew Fox and Joel Sinensky, inspired by a 2022 tweet about Anne Frank's white privilege, in which a progressive theater company stages The Diary of Anne Frank as an Afro-Latin hip-hop musical; it ran at Asylum NYC in 2025 and the Orpheum Theatre in 2026.
Slapstick
Slapstick: subgenre of physical comedy built on exaggerated, often violent action, pratfalls, and visual gags; term from the battacio paddle and Rich's Harlequinades; dominated silent cinema via Keystone (1912), Chaplin and Keaton.
Slave Play
Slave Play, Jeremy O. Harris's three-act drama about interracial couples in Antebellum Sexual Performance Therapy; premiered 2018 at NYTW, Broadway 2019, record 12 Tony nominations, 2024 West End premiere.
Sleep No More (2011 play)
Sleep No More: Punchdrunk's immersive Macbeth-as-film-noir at New York's McKittrick Hotel, running March 2011 to January 5, 2025; masked silent audiences, 100+ rooms, Drama Desk and Obie awards, later versions in Shanghai and Seoul.
Sleight of hand
Sleight of hand, also called legerdemain or prestidigitation, is the art of deceiving spectators through adroit hand movements in magic and card tricks, documented since 2500 BCE and studied today in attention and perception research.
Slice of life
Slice of life: term for presenting unshaped everyday experience, originating in Zola's theatrical naturalism (fourth wall, detailed sets, open endings) and used in fiction, film, and anime-related genres.
Slut: The Play
Slut: The Play is a Katie Cappiello play by The Arts Effect All-Girl Theater Company, premiered at the 2013 NY Fringe Festival, about teen Joey Del Marco's sexual assault and slut-shaming; adapted into Netflix's Grand Army.
Smash (musical)
Smash is a 2025 Broadway backstage-farce musical adapted from the NBC TV series, with score by Shaiman and Wittman, book by Martin and Elice, directed by Susan Stroman at the Imperial Theatre, opening April 10 and closing June 22, 2025.
Smashana Kurukshetra
Smashana Kurukshetra (ಶ್ಮಶಾನ ಕುರುಕ್ಷೇತ್ರ) is a 1931 Kannada play by the poet Kuvempu, set on the Kurukshetra battlefield the night after the Mahabharata war, a landmark anti-war work.
Snake charming
Snake charming is a South Asian street performance in which a sapera plays the been or pungi before a cobra, which sways as if dancing.
Social drama
Social drama (German: Soziales Drama) is a stage drama treating the living conditions of the lower classes, closely tied to Naturalism and the industrial revolution.
Sofie Hagen
Sofie Hagen, Danish stand-up comedian, author, and podcaster; Edinburgh Best Newcomer 2015 for Bubblewrap; books Happy Fat and Will I Ever Have Sex Again?; podcasts Bad People and Help Hole; distinct from designer Sofia Hagen.
Solomon Mikhoels
Solomon Mikhoels (Shloyme Vovsi), 1890–1948, Soviet Yiddish actor and artistic director of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater, wartime chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, murdered on Stalin's orders in January 1948.
Sommore
Sommore (Lori Ann Rambough, born 1966, Trenton, NJ), American stand-up comedian called the "Queen of Comedy"; first woman to host BET's Comic View, Queens of Comedy headliner, star of Friday After Next and Netflix's Chandelier Fly.
Sondheim Theatre
Sondheim Theatre, formerly the Queen's Theatre, is a West End theatre at 51 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, opened 1907, designed by W G R Sprague, renamed in 2019 for Stephen Sondheim's 90th birthday, home of Les Misérables since 2004.
Sonezaki Shinjū
Sonezaki Shinjū (曻根崎心中, "The Love Suicides at Sonezaki") is a Japanese puppet play by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, first performed in Osaka in 1703, a month after the real double suicide it dramatizes.
Song of the Earth (MacMillan ballet)
Song of the Earth is Kenneth MacMillan's one-act 1965 ballet to Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, created for Stuttgart Ballet (Marcia Haydée, Ray Barra, Egon Madsen) after the Royal Opera House board rejected the score, then acquired by The Royal Ballet in May 1966.
Songs for a New World
Songs for a New World: Jason Robert Brown's 1995 Off-Broadway song cycle, his debut, directed by Daisy Prince at the WPA Theatre, four singers, theme of life-changing decisions, famous for "Stars and the Moon."
Sophia Anne Caruso
Sophia Anne Caruso (born 2001, Spokane, Washington) is an American actress and singer known for originating Lydia Deetz in Broadway's Beetlejuice, her Broadway debut in Blackbird, Lazarus, The School for Good and Evil, and One Piece's Miss Goldenweek.
Sophie Duker
Sophie Duker (born 1990) is an English stand-up comedian, writer, and actor, winner of Taskmaster series 13 (2022). Known for Edinburgh shows Venus, Hag, and Hot Beef Injection, and for hosting the Wacky Racists comedy club.
Sophie Hunter
Sophie Hunter (born 1978) is a British theatre and opera director, playwright, and producer; directorial debut The Terrific Electric (Barbican, 2007), Associate Director on Enron, producer of The End We Start From, and wife of Benedict Cumberbatch.
Sophie Willan
Sophie Willan, English actor, writer and stand-up comedian from Bolton, creator and star of BBC Two's Alma's Not Normal; triple BAFTA winner, first Caroline Aherne Bursary recipient, founder of Stories of Care.
Sophocles (Σοφοκλῆς)
Sophocles (Σοφοκλῆς, c. 496–406 BCE), Athenian tragic poet of Colonus, second of the great three tragedians; wrote about 120 plays, added the third actor, raised the chorus to 15, won about 24 first prizes, and left seven complete tragedies including Oedipus Tyrannus and Antigone.
Sotoba Komachi
Sotoba Komachi is a Noh play by Kannami about the aged poet Ono no Komachi, who debates a monk and is possessed by her dead suitor's spirit.
Soulpepper
Soulpepper, also called Soulpepper Theatre Company, is Toronto's largest not-for-profit repertory theatre company, founded by actors in 1998 and resident at the Young Centre in the Distillery District, home of the Soulpepper Academy training program.
Sound effect
A sound effect is a recorded, performed, or generated sound other than speech or music used to support performance. Covers ancient thunder machines, foley, electronic cue playback (QLab), and AI generation.
Southern African theatre traditions
Southern African theater traditions are the theatrical practices of the sub-continent, rooted in indigenous oral narrative, praise poetry, and dance, and reshaped by colonial and protest theater.
Sowei mask
The sowei mask is a carved wooden helmet mask worn by women of the Sande society during initiation ceremonies, chiefly among the Mende people of Sierra Leone.
Spanish Golden Age theatre
Spanish Golden Age theater is the tradition of commercial verse drama centered on the comedia nueva, flourishing in Spain from the mid-sixteenth century, with playwrights like Lope de Vega and Calderón.
Special effect
Special effect: an illusion created live or on camera, beyond ordinary scenery or lighting. Covers theatre classifications (mechanical, pyrotechnical, electrical), Shakespearean and Victorian stagecraft, early cinema, fog safety, and modern projection and tracking systems.