Talk:Theatre/Archive 2

This is an archive of past discussions about Theatre. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Unclear Style: "Vanguard-style theatre"

Does anyone know what vanguard-style theatre is? If so, perhaps we could make the link under "Theatre Venues and Styles" point to a specific vanguard page, rather than the disambiguation page. --Lackthereof 17:46, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Or we could eliminate it until such a time as there is a valid article or section to link to (which is what I just did). Cheers, GentlemanGhost 22:02, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Merging Drama and Theatre

The two articles are now too similar. Unless someone writes an article that distinguishes Drama from Theatre, I would vote to merge them. If there are two separate articles, they should start off by saying that the other topic is covered in the other place. --Ssilvers 01:26, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. theatre and drama are two completely separate subjects if you explore their means and definitions. Drama can specifically refer to a genre, a story, art, an emotional quality, and commonly used to describe theatre class. Theatre on the other hand refers directly to a form of live entertainment that incorporates many types of artistic elements. Theatre can refer to simply a building, profession, live entertainment, group of people, place of action, and/or an audience. In end, this article should be cleaned up as it does not truly describe theatre or drama in a notable way.

Not OK. "Drama" refers to the literary genre and also to a stylistic element in the arts (e.g., Baroque painting is dramatic). "Theatre" refers to the entire art form, incorporating acting, effects, costume, architecture--AND dramatic literature. Perhaps the two articles need re-writing to reflect more strict definitions. Truddick 14:05, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the above statement. Drama and theatre are two distinctive things. Dramas include plays, films, television shows, radio shows, and other performed works based in literature, with artistic intentions, and involving conflict and action.

I agree the articles should not be merged as there are subtitle differences between the two terms, as well as other meaning for the terms (i.e. drama- emotional turmoil) See also links should be in place, but the two entries should not be combined

Jacob Z Klimaszewski (Cambridge UK) - The articles of "Drama" and "Theatre" should NOT be merged. As they are totally different. Drama, is an art form, it shows in essence the behavioural traits of people, or orginsations both in a realistic setting and an ideological one, Drama can be manifested into works of theatre, but also film, television and literature. Theatre is the concept of public performance, and can accomodate ANY performing act. A musical concert for example, is a work of theatre just as much as a straight play is.

Good point, Jacob. But the underlying reason the articles were probably merged was that two groups unwittingly started out writing about the same topic one beginning with "Drama" and the other with the T-word. The particular practicioners of the stage art who haunt Wikipedia and insist on inflicting their misunderstandings on the general public, our readers, tend to take a rather proprietory view of any words related to their field, including which spelling ought to be used for the T-word (go to the Archive link above if you don't believe me). So I am sure your points about the other uses of "drama" will be lost on them. In other words, there is no one to add those ohter points to a Drama article, if it still existed, and it is likely that the T-people would just vandalize any attempts to describe drama as anything beyond simply the T-trade to which they belong as we have witnessed all too often in this article. W.C. 02:21, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

W.C. - while I am not going to disagree with the idea that drama and theatre have no cross-overs I am utterly and completely with Jacob on this one. Most commercial theatre uses drama, but the moment you look outside of the straight-and-narrow suddenly you start to see that theatre encompasses a huge range of things that are as far removed from drama as the average Wikipedian is from attractive single women. This isn't just limited to the more obscure practitioners either - I don't see there as being anything particuarly dramatic about Waiting For Godot, or Peter Hendke for example. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sebbi (talk • contribs) 00:38, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

List of Playwrights in See Also section

Why are the playwrights listed in See Also section more relevant to the general topic of Theatre than any other playwright? All listed here are also listed in the List of Playwrights article. Since this article already links to List of Playwrights, I am removing the individual playwrights listed here (Aphra Behn, Arthur Miller, August Strindberg, Clifford Odets, David Mamet, Eugene O'Neill, Henrik Ibsen, Lillian Hellman, Tennessee Williams, William Shakespeare). Bfx12a9 18:33, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Theatre vs Theater in the US

I believe that "theatre" is most commonly used for Shakespearean plays, and "theater" is more commonly used as a synonym for "cinema" in the US. 67.188.172.165 00:07, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Those who hold opinions about the spellings, or have heard opinions of others and wondered whether or not they were correct, may also want to see what statistical analysis of actual use of these two spellings tells us. That's been discussed earlier here (just click on this link) W.C. 02:06, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I personally didn't like the way that was conducted. They way it was set up they had only the opinions of a few people people who would bother to read the entire page. I like to go by a comparison of the number of hits on a google search. But the discussion is over and I'm too late.74.69.234.9 02:23, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

It's never to late to prevent the Brits from injecting their spellings for words into Wikipedia ;P Never give up, never surrender!BcRIPster 16:25, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Hold on here! I just read that page that W.C. referenced and the the majority of the votes were for "er", and the overall tone of the page was a decision to stay with "er", so why the heck is this page now "re". I call that it be changed back. Who want's to host the vote or make the change? If nobody steps up in a few days I will take it upon myself to correct this. Additionally looking at the Google word fight page, and doing other checking "er" is the common usage so I strongly believe it should be changed back, irregardless my teasing our Queen's English friends :) BcRIPster 16:32, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

That debate (referenced by W.C. should be disregarded. The anonymous protagonist used the tactic of providing an overwhelming mass of "evidence" on the assumption that no one would go to the trouble of verifying it. I had time to investigate four of his/her "facts" and disproved all of them. S/He also tried to deny or explain away My research (which shows an 80% +/- 4% prevalence of theatre for both Live and Cinema listings for the U.S.A.), and presented such a distorted analysis of a previous vote that s/he claimed that I had voted for "er" dramatic 18:59, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

No, Dramatic "proved" nothing. The research I did appears below and it speaks for itself. I think most would agree that the New York Times, Time and Newsweek etc. (all North Eastern based) and their use of -er, trumps the telephone book full of proper name usage, not generic usage, of -re. What happened in the "vote" was British members and a few North American's who personally prefer -re (I think because they think it sets them aside from the masses or some such thing) but could not present any objective evidence to support that subjective choice, got all their buddies together and made sure they could control the outcome. I wish they could just admit that here and not try and pretend that their vote was based on what the general usage really was. W.C. 18:16, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

BcRIPster asks: "why the heck is this page now "re". I call that it be changed back." It was never "Theater", unless I'm misreading something: check here for the oldest version in the page history. No need to inject my Br Eng spelling into this article! --Old Moonraker 22:02, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

It was indeed -er for quite a long time. If you look you will find that a great deal of U.S. spellings across Wikipedia were changed by little British interest groups from U.S. to British spellings over the course of time. And that in the case of "theater" they were aided by some North American's who were basing it on their personally thinking -re would make them seem "sophisticated" but not on what the prevalent usage is. Anyone thinking they can ever change it back to -er should be warned that a good number of Brits have inserted themselves into positions of authority and try to control things to make sure things go the way of British spellings as happened here. The referee involved was a Brit and also voted for the British spelling. People think Wikipedia is a good place to insert their revision of reality, and these -re folks make it their mission in life to revise reality in this fashion. I don't think they are a nuisance on Wikipedia that can easily be dislodged. W.C. 18:16, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Can I make the point that the reason why the Brits use -re is because, from on Ontological point of view, it just makes more sense. It went from theatron in Greek to Theatre in French and then the British adopted the French spelling and anglised the pronounciation. Why the Americans decided to switch it round is anybody's guess? I don't want to kick a dead horse, but I think, seeing as this is not exclusively an American site, I think it should go to the more global spelling (I can't find any other English speaking country that uses -er). Sebbi (talk) 01:39, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

"true" origin

It seems possible that "teatr" is not only Greek, but existed in Persian even before 550BC; but this is a big theory, and should have a source (btw the claim doesnt even say Cyrus predates Greek theatre...), so until then, I put it here: The originality of this word is neither French not Greek. This word is Persian (pronounced Te'atr). Existing documents strongly show the use of this word more than 2500 years in Persian language. In the era of the Cyrus the great (the Persian King in around B.C. 500) there were a group of people who were responsible for constructing the senses of the war for ordinary people or others so that they could share their victories feelings as well as their experiences with the people who were back up or by any reasons could not participate in the war. This kind of narrative stories was called Te'atr in Persian. --Flammingo^Hey 20:01, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Theatre Reportage

In the last decade Theatre Reportage has proven very popular in Europe, Teatro di Nascosto is counted as the most known but also most active theatre group in this field. Annet Henneman is the most influencial figure in Theatre reportage. In 1997 Teatro di Nascosto which is based in Italy - Volterra started to collect stories about the people and the countries that were in problem or involved in war and repressing human rights like India, Iraq, Slovenia, Iran and Turkey.

Their work is crucial in creating new audiance to the theatre as they brought true story of people and different nationalities and write theatre plays and perform it in different countries of Europe in different languages.

Teatro di Nascosto is also the most known for their work in creating Acadimic of Theatre Reportage which they created a school in which they invited a large number of refugee and asylum seekers and the members of the Teatro di Nascosto lived with them and worked with them. Students were taught Drama lessons as well as Italian language and English language. 'Some theatre experts argue that actors should study all of the commonly taught acting methods to perfect their craft, such as the Meisner, Stanislavsky, Strasberg, and Hagen acting methods.' I am a disabled new user but the sentence I have quoted above is nonsense. It doesn't have even one citation and would need several. There are a huge number of interrelated 'methods' of acting but nobody would claim that a well-trained, experienced Stanislavskian Actor necessarily needs to study Meisner, or vice-versa, or Kathakali for that matter. Stewarpm 22:42, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

The latter is now called a weasle word, so readers are reminded the passage is unreliable.--Flammingo^Hey 08:21, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Additions: "Theatre Resources"

I am a new user so can't add it myself, however, there is a very good resource at www.playsonthenet.com for theatre goers, playwrights etc. Just thought it may be a good addition as I use it quite a lot. Theatre007 15:10, 24 July 2007

Awards in theatre

Some of these are not really notable. As a rough test, what would editors think if all those without an article (redlinks) were deleted? Googling before deletion, to avoid missing any serious ones, would be good. --Old Moonraker (talk) 19:55, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Withdrawing: I started on this, but now I'm dropping the proposal. The last six sections are a huge cruft magnet, notwithstanding the inline appeal to editors to keep to the notable, but once you start, where do you stop?

--Old Moonraker (talk) 08:39, 15 December 2007 (UTC)