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theatre
art
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Also known as: drama
lithograph poster for Hamlet
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- Western theatre theatrical production African theatre performance art Black theatre
theatre, also spelled theater, in dramatic arts, an art concerned almost exclusively with live performances in which the action is precisely planned to create a coherent and significant sense of drama. Though the word theatre is derived from the Greek theaomai, “to see,” the performance itself may appeal either to the ear or to the eye, as is suggested by the interchangeability of the terms spectator (which derives from words meaning “to view”) and audience (which derives from words meaning “to hear”). Sometimes the appeal is strongly intellectual, as in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but the intellectual element in itself is ...(100 of 8217 words)