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Ancient Greece theatre in Taormina, Sicily, Italy

Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually 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. It is the oldest form of drama, though live theatre has now been joined by modern recorded forms. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. Places, normally buildings, where performances regularly take place are also called "theatres" (or "theaters"), as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, "a place for viewing"), itself from θεάομαι (theáomai, "to see", "to watch", "to observe").

A theatre company is an organisation that produces theatrical performances, as distinct from a theatre troupe (or acting company), which is a group of theatrical performers working together. (Full article...)

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Francis Bacon
The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument, first raised in the 19th century, that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works attributed to him. All but a few Shakespeare scholars and literary historians consider it a fringe belief. Anti-Stratfordians believe that Shakespeare was a front to shield the identity of the real author or authors, who for some reason did not want or could not accept public credit. The controversy has spawned a vast body of literature, and more than 80 authorship candidates have been proposed, the most popular being Francis Bacon (pictured), Edward de Vere, Christopher Marlowe, and William Stanley. To the claim that Shakespeare lacked sufficient education, aristocratic sensibility, or familiarity with the royal court for a writer of such eminence and genius, scholars reply that there is much documentary evidence supporting his authorship—title pages, testimony by contemporary poets and historians, official records—and none supporting any other candidate.

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Chikamatsu Monzaemon

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Pinter in 2005
Harold Pinter (1930–2008) was a Nobel Prize-winning English playwright and screenwriter, with a career that spanned more than 50 years. His plays include The Birthday Party, The Homecoming and Betrayal, and his screenplays include The Servant, The French Lieutenant's Woman and Sleuth. Pinter appeared as an actor in productions of his own work on radio and film. He also undertook roles in works by other writers. He directed nearly 50 productions for stage, theatre and screen. He was born and raised in Hackney, east London, trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Central School of Speech and Drama, and worked in repertory theatre before achieving success as a writer. In his later years, he was known for his political activism and his opposition to the war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. Pinter's last stage performance was as Krapp in Beckett's play Krapp's Last Tape, for the Royal Court Theatre, in 2006.

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Peter Ustinov
By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.
Peter Ustinov, Christian Science Monitor, 1962

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