The Ultimate Theatre Glossary: Key Terms & Definitions
Agent
Person who connects theatre artists (actors, designers, etc.) with the producers and others who hire them.
Backers
Investors who help fund a theatrical production.
Beijing Opera
A classical, traditional Chinese form that combines music, dance, and speech with elaborate, codified costumes, makeup, and movement.
Box, Pit, and Gallery
Auditorium arrangement common from the Renaissance into the nineteenth century, including the ground-level pit with boxes and galleries surrounding it, with the highest galleries holding the cheapest seats.
Bunraku
Extraordinarily lifelike, classical Japanese puppetry form, in which each puppet is manipulated by three puppeteers.
Catharsis
A release of tensions resulting from the climax of a tragedy.
Commercial Theatre
In general, theatre that earns a profit for its investors; however, this term is increasingly difficult to define as its meaning continues to broaden.
Cycle, or Mystery, Plays
Medieval plays based on stories from the Bible that were elaborately staged, often during Christian festivals.
Dramaturg
A specialist in dramatic analysis and literature, production research, and audience engagement.
Environmental Theatre
A style of staging that involves flexible, found, or transformed performance space in which actors and audience share the same space; also involves variable focus, and emphasis on all elements of the performance as language (not just the written text) as formulated by Richard Schechner on the basis of the work of such groups as the Polish Laboratory Theatre, the Living Theatre, and the Open Theatre.
Feminist Theatre
A term that, at its most basic, describes someone dedicated to equal treatment and rights for men and women under the law and in society.
Intercultural Theatre
Between or among two or more cultures.
Kabuki
A classical Japanese form of music theatre developed in the eighteenth century that emphasizes spectacle.
Literary Managers
Dramaturg positions that include such tasks as assisting in the selection of plays at a theatre.
Liturgical Dramas
Performances developed during the Middle Ages by and within the Catholic church to communicate Christian teachings.
Mansion
Term for a set piece in performances during the Middle Ages.
Mediated Performance
Performance that is mediated through technology, such as the lens of the camera or a microphone.
Melodrama
A movement that developed parallel to Romanticism, but outlived it to become the most popular form of theatre in America and Europe during the nineteenth century. Some hallmarks include plots focusing on good versus evil, with clear-cut heroes and villains; exotic locales; plot devices such as hidden documents, disguises, and kidnappings; and musical accompaniment.
Noh
A classical Japanese form created in the fourteenth century; emphasizes minimalism as a reflection of the influences of Zen Buddhism.
Nonprofit Theatre
A term largely related to the tax status of an organization; not-for-profit theatres must ensure that profits go not to investors, but back into the workings of the theatre, including staff salaries.
Pageant Wagons
Movable wagons carrying the set (mansion) and playing area for the cycle plays of the Middle Ages.
Paratheatricals
Ancient Roman entertainments outside of the theatre structures that housed tragedies and comedies. During the empire they became increasingly common, replacing theatre as the primary form of entertainment. Common types were gladiatorial combats, chariot racing, venationes (animal fights), and naumachiae (recreated sea battles).
Pentad
Act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose. Kenneth Burke (1897–1993) argued that most social interaction and human communication should be analyzed as a form of drama where the “plot” is shaped by the interactions of the five pentadic elements. Such a method is called a “dramatistic analysis,” and Burke saw the relationship between life and theater as literal rather than symbolic. In his view, all the world really is a stage.
Performance Studies
Discipline developed during the past 20 years that expands the notion of what can be considered performance; one of its primary theorists, Richard Schechner, posited a horizontal continuum of performative activities, with ritual on one end, play on the other, and such activities as games, sports, and theatre in between.
Playhouses
Common term for theatres during the English Renaissance.
Postmodern Theatre
Umbrella term for a philosophy, condition, or movement, depending on one’s perspective, in the contemporary world that reflects such characteristics as pastiche, fragmentation, disunity, and suspicion of any one explanation for things, or “grand narratives.”
Producer
Primary individual (or, increasingly, group or corporation) responsible for raising money for a theatrical production.
Proscenium
Theatre configuration in which the spectators are separated from the performers by a proscenium arch that acts as a frame through which the actors, perspective scenery, and so on are viewed. The audience thus views the production from only one side, the front.
Sanskrit Theatre
An ancient Indian theatre form, in the language of Sanskrit, which avoided realistic practices and involved codified performance, including elaborate costumes, makeup, and a complex set of movements and gestures known as mudras.
Theatre-in-the-Round
Theatre configuration in which the audience views a performance from four sides; also known as “arena” staging.
Theory
An intellectual construct created to explain a phenomenon; also termed a hypothesis.
Thrust Stage
Theatre configuration in which the audience views a performance from three sides, as the stage “thrusts” into the spectator space.
Willing Suspension of Disbelief
An audience’s willingness to become caught up in the “fantasy” world on stage.
tasy” world on stage.