Portal:Theatre/Intro
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Theatre (Greek "theatron"), enjoys the distinction of two spellings in American English: "theater" when referring to the Amerian spelling, and "theatre" when referring to the British spelling. There is no technical distinction between the meanings of the two spellings, however most theatre artists prefer the European spelling because it creates a historical nod to the ancient Greek term theatron. Some also use the American spelling to designate a theater building and the European term to reference the art itself, as in the "art of theatre." Theatre is that branch of the performing arts concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience using combinations of speech, gesture, music, dance, sound and spectacle &mdash--indeed, any one or more elements of the other performing arts. In addition to standard narrative dialogue style, theatre takes such forms as opera, ballet, mime, kabuki, classical Indian dance, Chinese opera, mummers' plays, and pantomime.
