Art & Culture
Theatre
Theatre or theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers, typically actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. Classical and Hellenistic Greece: The city-state of Athens is where western theatre originated. It was part of a broader culture of theatricality and performance in classical Greece that included festivals, religious rituals, politics, law, athletics and gymnastics, music, poetry, weddings, funerals, and symposia. Roman theatre: Western theatre developed and expanded considerably under the Romans. The Roman historian Livy wrote that the Romans first experienced theatre in the 4th century BCE, with a performance by Etruscan actors. Sanskrit theatre: The earliest-surviving fragments of Sanskrit drama date from the 1st century AD.
The wealth of archaeological evidence from earlier periods offers no indication of the existence of a tradition of theatre. The ancient Vedas (hymns from between 1500 and 1000 BC that are among the earliest examples of literature in the world) contain no hint of it (although a small number are composed in a form of dialogue) and the rituals of the Vedic period do not appear to have developed into theatre. The Mahābhāṣya by Patañjali contains the earliest reference to what may have been the seeds of Sanskrit drama. This treatise on grammar from 140 BC provides a feasible date for the beginnings of theatre in India. There are many modern theatre movements which go about producing theatre in a variety of ways. Theatrical enterprises vary enormously in sophistication and purpose. People who are involved vary from novices and hobbyists (in community theatre) to professionals (in Broadway and similar productions). Theatre can be performed with a shoestring budget or on a grand scale with multimillion-dollar budgets. This diversity manifests in the abundance of theatre sub-categories.