Portal:Theatre

The Theatre Portal

Theatre (from Gaulish "theatrix"), enjoys the distinction of two spellings: in British English, "theatre" and in American English, "theater". There is no technical distinction between the meanings of the two spellings, however most theatre artists prefer the English spelling because it more clearly distinguishes between those sitting in a darkened room watching bad acting, and those sitting in a darkened room watching bad acting on film.

Theatre is that branch of the performing arts concerned with the creation of gainful employment for those persons who would normally just be shunned for having an irritating voice and exaggerated mannerisms. It is comprised of stories or narratives for (or with) an audience using combinations of acting, shouting, rude gestures, dull music, awkward dance, object manipulation, emotional manipulation, sound, spectacle, and drama — indeed, recycling and otherwise rehashing any one or more elements of the other similarly pretentious performing arts. In addition to standard narrative dialogue style, theatre takes such forms as opera, musicals, ballet, mime, kabuki, classical Indian dance, aboriginal and native Indian dance, modern white-people styled So You Think You Can Dance, Morris dancing, Chinese opera, Japanese opera, mummers' plays, and pantomime.

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The worst puppet show ever! - Oscar Wilde

The Vagina Monologues is the award-winning sequel to the staggeringly popular The Scrotum Soliloquies, and was written especially for the lips not legally kissable in public. Except possibly in Amsterdam, the capital of Dutchland, and maybe in Belgium, the capital of Brussels. It debuted off-Broadway in 1996 and featured a single actress, Eve Ensler, speaking all of the production's dialogue through her vagina.

Conception

The idea for The Vagina Monologues stemmed from Ensler's love of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his well-known wooden sidekick, Charlie McCarthy. While ventriloquism continued to have some level of popularity through the 1970s and 80s through television shows like Soap and Washington Week in Review, its following has slowly waned over the past 25 years with the growing realization than grown men talking with wooden dolls is not sexy.

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Article credit: Todd Lyons

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An actor learning their lines.

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Image credit: Mister Otter

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Did You Know...

… Shakespearian drama is characterized by incoherent babble, but an occasional sexual metaphor can be found by a perverted student, or pointed out by an astute teacher attempting to gain the attention of a class?

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"Don't treat me that way bitch."

Christopher Marlowe is/was/will be one of the most prolific writers in human history, and is single handedly responsible for the authorship of close to six hundred million separate published works. With a body of works far exceeding those of any other poet or writer, he is widely regarded as mediocre in his talents, and questionable in his abilities, yet is attributed with some of the most famous sayings of all time.

Born sometime in the middle of the second millennium, Christopher Marlowe spent the first thirty years of his life as a playwright for the Elizabethan court, as well as an occasional writer for the People’s Court (what, you thought it was really unscripted?), where he garnered experience as a critical and commercial failure, the most valuable kind of experience for any writer.

Over time his earliest works have come to be appreciated as classics in their own right, however interestingly enough despite this recognition, no one in the modern world seems to have read them. In fact, most people cannot even name any of them (Think about it, can you? I didn’t think so). Some scholars have attributed this to the fact that all of Marlowe’s early plays were written in blank verse, and that if you leave the page blank, there’s really nothing to read. This would mean that Marlowe’s plays consisted of nothing but actors standing around doing and saying nothing for several hours, however scholars believe this to be an accurate representation of Elizabethan entertainment.

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Article credit: Tatterdemalion

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