Dictionary:

theater

  (thē'ə-tər)

1. A building, room, or outdoor structure for the presentation of plays, films, or other dramatic performances.
2. A room with tiers of seats used for lectures or demonstrations: an operating theater at a medical school.
3. 1. Dramatic literature or its performance; drama: the theater of Shakespeare and Marlowe.
   2. The milieu of actors and playwrights.
4. 1. The quality or effectiveness of a theatrical production: good theater; awful theater.
   2. Dramatic material or the use of such material: “His summation was a great piece of courtroom theater” (Ron Rosenbaum).
5. The audience assembled for a dramatic performance.
6. A place that is the setting for dramatic events.
7. A large geographic area in which military operations are coordinated: the European theater during World War II.

[Middle English theatre, from Old French, from Latin theātrum, from Greek theātron, from theāsthai, to watch, from theā, a viewing.]

WORD HISTORY   Theories about the development of the theater in the West generally begin with Greek drama; this is etymologically appropriate as well as historically correct, since the words theory and theater are related through their Greek sources. The Greek ancestor of theater is theātron, “a place for seeing, especially for dramatic representation, theater.” Theātron is derived from the verb theāsthai, “to gaze at, contemplate, view as spectators, especially in the theater,” from theā, “a viewing.” The Greek ancestor of theory is theōriā, which meant among other things “the sending of theōroi (state ambassadors sent to consult oracles or attend games),” “the act of being a spectator at the theater or games,” “viewing,” “contemplation by the mind,” and “theory or speculation.” The source of theōriā is theōros, “an envoy sent to consult an oracle, spectator,” a compound of theā, “viewing,” and –oros, “seeing.” It is thus fitting to elaborate theories about culture while seeing a play in a theater.

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In Peter Brook's famous description of the essential ingredients for theatre as simply ‘the audience and the message’, the physical presence of actors is not judged strictly necessary. Yet the history of theatre worldwide makes clear that the first requirement of spectacle or drama is the performer's body. As the mime, Etienne Decroux, ironically put it: ‘When the actor ceases to appear on the stage with his body, he will be justified in disregarding the art of the body.’ Decroux condemned the use of elaborate scenery, lighting, costume, and properties (characteristic of the naturalistic or ‘fourth wall’ style of drama prevalent since the nineteenth century) — all of which, he held, obscured the bodily art of acting itself. Contemporary mime stripped the art to its essentials: to act naked on a naked stage, dispensing with all visual or musical support or accompaniment, and thus proving that the gesture can be self-sufficient. A mime, Jean Dorcy claimed, could portray the universe in two square feet.

Older theatre traditions such as classical Greek drama, the commedia dell'arte, and the Japanese Noh theatre, all influenced the development of contemporary mime. Whereas the Classical Greek tragic actor's physical movements were restricted both by his heavy costume and by the transcendant dignity of his roles, and he relied for expression on his voice, the actor in Greek comedy was expected to be something of an acrobat, displaying physical agility and skill in a primarily bodily form of theatre. The Japanese Noh was a drama of soliloquy and reminiscence, rather than one of conflict, in which the actor's stylized movements and stamping provided a rhythmic accompaniment to his narrative, with subjects taken from myth and legend. The commedia dell'arte was a mainly improvisatory form of theatre developed in sixteenth-century Italy: its influence has extended to the present in the stock characters its actors created — most famously Pantalone and Arlecchino — and the comic stunts and routines which evolved around them.

Contrary to the practice of Decroux and other mimes, these forms of drama do make use of spoken dialogue, costume, stage settings, and music. However, the feature these share in common with mime, and which epitomizes the non-naturalistic and body-based nature of these traditions, is the concealment or disguising of the face, by the use of a mask, or heavy stylized makeup which obscures the natural expression of the actor.

The purpose of this is to turn the eyes away from the face and towards the body of the actor. Dorcy once wrote of acting that ‘one cannot simultaneously and fully use the body and the face as means of expression without one of these two being overshadowed by the other.’ Perhaps it is appropriate, for a proponent of unspoken theatre, that the third instrument of the actor, the voice, is missing from the this statement. Indeed, practitioners of mime often claim a conflict between bodily movement, gesture, and attitude, and the spoken text, in holding the attention of the spectator. (This word is preferred by Dorcy and others over the word ‘audience’, for prioritizing the visual over the aural dimensions of theatre.)

Once the face is concealed, the spectator loses sight of what is commonly thought to be the most expressive part of the human frame. Attention is focused instead on the body, which becomes the sole vehicle of expression. Bodily movement, gesture, attitude are heightened and intensified in order to emphasize contrasts, and to eliminate superfluous movements and amplify or exaggerate the remaining motions.

The movement of the actor's body is inseparable from theatre, according to Dorcy: ‘The stage is a place where space changes nature, size and architecture according to the body occupying it; without a body in motion, the stage would be a desert.’ In such physical acting, each image created by the body, viewed separately, will reveal distinct emotions and circumstances. The gesture of the mime can conjure up absent objects; sometimes it serves as an interjection and expresses the psychological content of the moment: hesitation, joy, fear, etc. A successful attitude is like a condensed drama; perfect, complete, it is an image epitomizing identity, origin, destination, and intent.

The ideal intensity of bodily expression on the stage is summarized by Jean-Louis Barrault, who wrote that ‘As soon as I found myself … I was put to death. My life is an execution. My conduct will therefore be a struggle against death, against the clock, against time. A single watchword must be issued in this inner world of the body: to delay the hour of surrender, to delay the “moment of truth”. Accordingly, from head to toe, every part of this body is placed in a state of alert.’ Its enactment of the absurd and tragic collision between the inner world of the self and the outer world of destiny links mime to the plays of Beckett and Ionesco, in the Theatre of the Absurd. Its dictates, based on Jarry's 1896 play, Ubu Roi, held that human life was so illogical and language so inadequate as a means of communication that one was thrown back onto the body as the sole vehicle of expression, whether laughter, pain, or bewilderment.

Bodily confrontation is emphasized in the later Theatre of Cruelty movement, begun in the 1960s. Inspired by the writings of Antonin Artaud, it sought to free humans from the restraints of morality and reason, returning to a state of unfettered expression of power and desire. This was a precursor to the recent resurgence of ‘new melodrama’, which employs non-naturalistic, expressionistic styles of acting, and physical theatre, with its emphasis on extreme bodily states and forms of expression.

— Natsu Hattori

Bibliography

• Cheney, S. W. (1972). The theatre. Three thousand years of drama, acting and stagecraft. McKay, New York.
• Dorcy, J. (1961). The mime, (trans. R. Speller and P. de Fontnouvelle). (5 vols.) McGraw-Hill New York.
• Hochman, S. (1984). Encyclopaedia of world drama. Robert Speller & Sons, New York

n. 1. the area in which something happens: a new theater of war has been opened up.

2. denoting weapons for use in a particular region between tactical and strategic: he was working on theater defense missiles.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Architecture

Film and Theatre

For more information on theatre, visit Britannica.com.

Actors and theatre-workers appear to be one of the most superstitious of all occupational groups, and indeed many seem to regard being superstitious as a badge of the trade. Many of the superstitions are well known— whistling anywhere in a theatre being very unlucky, and Macbeth being so unlucky as to be referred to as ‘The Scottish Play’ rather than by its real name. Others are less well known—actors will not say the last lines of a play in rehearsal, to place an umbrella on a table during rehearsals spells disaster, and some unlucky tunes—such as ‘Three Blind Mice’ and ‘I dreamt I dwelt in Marble Halls’—are studiously avoided. Knowlson also devotes some paragraphs to the beliefs of ‘front-of-house’ staff such as ushers and box-office workers. Few of the reported superstitions can be traced back before 1900, and most are considerably later. Some exceptions are those printed in the Folk-Lore Record of 1879 which include a dislike of the colour blue for costumes, unless counteracted by silver, the dread of rehearsals on Sundays, and the belief that if the first customer to enter the auditorium on the first night is a woman the play is doomed.

Bibliography
The full bibliography list is available here.

• Folk-Lore Record 2 (1879), 203-5
• Opie and Tatem, 1989: 228, 395-7
• Knowlson, The Origins of Popular Superstitions and Customs (1930), 225-9
• J. B. Booth, Pink Parade (1933), 95-116
• Roy Harley Lewis, Theatre Ghosts (1988)

A building or outdoor structure providing a stage (and associated equipment) for the presentation of dramatic performances and seating for spectators.

theatre 1. Greek. The Greek theatre appears to have originated with the open-air circular dancing floor (orchēstra), a level space of hard earth constructed for performances of choral lyric, of which one variety, the dithyramb, is according to one tradition the progenitor of Attic tragedy (see 1). All large Greek theatres were open to the sky (but see ODEUM). The arrangement described below, which may be regarded as typical, is based on that of the theatre of Dionysus at Athens (see DIONYSUS, THEATRE OF). In the middle of the orchestra was a thymelē or altar of Dionysus, on the steps of which the flute-player who accompanied the chorus probably stood. For the spectators at Athens there was a theatron, ‘watching-place’, on the slope of the Acropolis above the orchestra. Important spectators sat on seats made of stone at the front of the theatron; the rest sat on backless wooden benches placed on rising terraces of earth, crossed at intervals by passageways for access. Beyond these bare facts the details of the construction of the theatre are very obscure. At each side of the orchestra was a parodos or ‘way-in’, used by the spectators when they entered the theatre and by the chorus and actors on entering and leaving the orchestra. In later times a convention grew up that when the scene was Athens, characters purporting to come on the scene from the agora or Piraeus should enter from the audience's right, since these places were situated in fact in that direction; coming from the country they entered from the left. At the back of the orchestra was a low platform or stage, perhaps 8 m. (25 ft.) wide and 3 m. (10 ft.) deep, connected by steps with the orchestra. Behind it and extending beyond it on each side was a building, the skēnē (‘tent’, ‘hut’), containing the dressing rooms, with a wide double door in the façade giving access to the stage. The skene provided the backdrop for the stage, and its roof could serve as a stage for action at a higher level, the setting of the solitary watchman on the palace roof in Agamemnon, for example.

There were two pieces of stage equipment, perhaps used mainly in tragedy (which would account for their being the object of mockery in comedy), the mēchanē (‘machine’) and the ekkyklēma (‘the roll-out’). The mechane was a kind of crane which could swing a character round and into view, particularly when a god is announced as being above the house or coming through the sky. The appearance in this manner of a god who provided a solution in an intractable situation originated the Latin phrase deus ex machina, ‘a god on a machine’, to describe an unexpected outside intervention which resolves a difficulty. Euripides was thought by some to be over-fond of this expedient for concluding a play. The ekkyklema was a device by which off-stage events in the drama could be revealed to the actors on stage and to the audience; a tableau was arranged on a platform which was then wheeled out through the central door of the skene (e.g. in Agamemnon, Clytemnestra standing over the murdered bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra). Various other stage-properties might be used in the Greek theatre, e.g. statues, altars, or other prominent features of the play, and scenery might be painted on boards. There was, however, no curtain. For the actors and their dress see COMEDY, GREEK 3 and TRAGEDY 2. For the admission charge see THEORIC FUND.

Glimpses of the lighter side of Greek theatre-going may be found in the Characters of Theophrastus which include the loquacious man who talked so much that his neighbours could not follow the play, the mean man who availed himself of a free day to bring his children, the shameless man who took advantage of his foreign guests to get admitted without paying, and the stupid man who fell asleep during the play and was left alone in the theatre when the audience had gone. Philochorus writing in the third century BC describes how the audience fill their cups with wine when the chorus enter and fill them again when the chorus leave. Aristotle comments that the eating of sweets is commonest when the actors are bad.

The theatre was used for many kinds of ceremonies apart from plays (see DIONYSIA).

2. Roman. There was no permanent theatre at Rome until 55 BC, when Pompey built one in stone from the spoils of the Mithridatic War. It was erected in the Campus Martius, next to the Curia (where Julius Caesar was later assassinated). There seem to have been seats for about 10, 000 spectators. Two other stone theatres were subsequently built in Rome, both in the Campus Martius, that of L. Cornelius Balbus dedicated in 13 BC, and that known as the theatre of Marcellus, built by the emperor Augustus and named after his adopted son.

In the time of Plautus, Terence, Ennius, and Pacuvius (late third and the second centuries BC), plays were performed on wooden stages in front of a temporary wooden building having three doors opening on to the stage. These stages would be erected in the Forum or Circus Maximus, with circles of wooden seats; an attempt to erect a permanent theatre in 155 BC was thwarted by the consul Scipio Nasica who induced the senate to demolish the building as it constituted a danger to public morality. But in the first century BC even the temporary theatres became quite elaborate, with linen awnings to keep the sun off the spectators in the auditorium (cavea), and ornately decorated stage buildings. The theatre had a semicircular orchestra; at the back of it was a stage wider and deeper than the Greek stage (as it existed later at least; see 1 above).

The orchestra was not used for dancing, as in Greece, but for seating, reserved for senators, priests, and officials. After 68 BC the equitēs had the right to occupy the first fourteen rows of the auditorium behind the orchestra. Behind the stage was the stage building which might rise as high as the sloping auditorium. The auditorium was much more enclosed than in a Greek theatre, and could even have the awnings replaced by a roof, as at Pompeii. The uncomfortable nature of the seating is mentioned by Ovid (Ars amatoria 1. 141), who refers to the narrow space allotted to each spectator, and to the knees of those behind pressing into the backs of those in front. From the end of the second century BC Roman theatres had a curtain, kept in a slot in the floor of the stage and raised at the end of the play (a convenient way of indicating that the performance was over). Stage scenery was said to have been first introduced in 99 BC. The chorus in the tragedies of Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius (unlike the chorus of Greek drama) stood on the stage, not in the orchestra, and could enter and exit like any other character (whereas with very rare exceptions the Greek chorus did not leave until the end of the play). This was more realistic; the functions of the chorus had changed and there was no longer that important lyrical element in drama for which it had been the mouthpiece.

The players were slaves or freedmen, trained to the profession, and organized in companies (grex, caterva) under the direction of a manager (dominus gregis) paid for by the magistrate who gave the ludi (‘games’) at which the plays were performed. The players' pay gradually increased, and although actors (like musicians) were originally despised, the examples of Roscius and Aesopus showed that popular actors might become rich and socially acceptable. Female parts (except in mimes and late comedy) were played by men. It is said that the type of character was indicated at first by wigs (white for old men, red for slaves, etc.) and later by masks (see ROSCIUS), but whether masks were in fact worn in the Roman theatre, and if so, when, is a matter of dispute. Tragic actors wore long flowing robes and high buskins (cothurni); comic actors wore ordinary dress and the soccus or low-heeled shoe.

Theater in America started as ritual performance by Native Americans and then, upon the arrival of the first white, Spanish settlers, became another sort of ritual, based on medieval European Christian morality plays. For many years, theater was outlawed in Colonial America, although the proscription hardly called a halt to performances. As everywhere, theater ranged between high and low: early "high" theater attempted to duplicate what was going on in Europe and included rewritten ("improved") Shakespeare and other, mostly British dramas, including School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. "Low" theater included riverboat shows, Vaudeville, minstrel shows, and Wild West shows. It was not until the late eighteenth century that an authentic "American" voice began to emerge in the theater. This voice continued to develop throughout the nineteenth century and found itself being embraced on the world stage during the twentieth century.

Early American Theater

While there are no records of the earliest Native American performances, Indian rituals were noted by the early white settlers. Native Americans performed most of their theatrical pieces in honor of various gods or to celebrate changes in seasons, harvests, hunts, battles, and so on. Among the many performances were the summer and winter rituals of the Pueblo Indians. Pueblo dramas included the Deer Dance, Buffalo Dance, Corn Dance, Raingod Dance, and the Eagle Dance. Variations on Native American performance were later played out many times with white settlers in rituals and ceremonies focused around treaties and other meetings. These dramas included gift giving, dances, and speeches. Later, Indians—and cowboys—became stock characters in performances ranging from melodramas to vaudeville. In "Wild West" shows of the nineteenth century, Indian rituals were recreated for white audiences in the eastern United States and in Europe.

The first recorded white colonial performances were morality plays performed by missionaries for Spanish soldiers in Florida in 1567. These plays were intended to show the supremacy of the Spaniards' religion and its ultimate triumph in the New World. Although no record of the actual play exists, it can be assumed that it took the stylized and ritualistic form of medieval drama.

In Colonial days, theater was looked down upon by many of the Puritanical white settlers, so it was not until 1665 that the first play performed in English was recorded. Ye Bare and Ye Cub was performed by three men in Accomack County, Virginia. Apparently someone was offended by the offering, or simply by the idea of theater, because the players were sued. After the play was performed in court, the performers were found "not guilty of fault." Quakers were especially opposed to theatrical performances and had laws passed against them in most of the colonies, beginning with William Penn's in Pennsylvania. Proscriptions against theater were not passed in Virginia, and that is likely why it became the home of the first professional American theater, the Company of Comedians, led by entrepreneur Lewis Hallam.

Hallam's troupe of provincial players arrived from England in 1752. Like most of the companies to follow, the Company of Comedians was run by an actor/manager. After performing Shakespeare in Williamsburg, Virginia, Hallam built the first theater in New York City in 1753 and in Charleston in 1754. Hallam's fare also included such English staples as Restoration drama, farce, and operetta. His company played Philadelphia and toured the South and eventually moved to Jamaica, where Hallam died. While in Jamaica, Hallam's wife married another theater producer, David Douglass, who had founded theaters in Philadelphia and New York. Under Douglass, the company moved back to the States, calling itself the American Company. Hallam's son, Lewis Hallam the Younger, often performed opposite his mother and proved to be a talented comic. In 1767, Hallam played the lead in the first professional American drama, Thomas Godfrey's Prince of Parthia.

In 1775, theater was again banned, this time by the Continental Congress. While the ban was routinely ignored, it did put off professional theater producers—including David Douglass, who moved back to Jamaica—and fostered more amateur performances, especially those featuring patriotic themes.

Theater in the Early United States

After the Revolutionary War (1775–1783), the American Company returned to New York City and when David Douglass died, Hallam took over and produced what is widely believed to be the first important American play, one written by a Harvard-educated lawyer and army officer, Royall Tyler. Tyler's play, The Contrast, debuted in New York in March 1787. The characters in The Contrast include a Revolutionary War veteran and a man deemed a natural nobleman. The leading character, Jonathan, was the first in a long line of "Yankees" to grace the American stage. Tyler made comparisons between American and British attitudes that favored the American. In addition to its themes of patriotism and the belief that love conquers all, Tyler's play is filled with references to the fashions and topics of the time. The Contrast was an instant hit that was also performed in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston and has seen revivals up to the twenty-first century.

During the early nineteenth century, touring groups continued to play a large role in American theater, and English actors were often imported to headline local productions. Among the more popular players were Edmund Kean and Junius Brutus Booth (father of actor Edwin Booth and actor/Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth). At this time, actors often specialized in one or two roles that they were known for.

The American-born actor credited with innovating a truly American style of acting was Edwin Forrest. After playing second leads to Edmund Kean, Forrest eventually became a leading man and played throughout the East, South, and Midwest. Forrest was an athletic actor who was a natural for heroic and rebellious roles. He found his greatest fame as star of Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags (1829), a play that he found by sponsoring a contest for a tragedy, "of which the hero … shall be an aboriginal of this country." Forrest played the Indian Metamora throughout his career, and the success of the play caused many other dramas featuring the noble savage to be entered into the American repertory.

For the most part, when Black Americans were portrayed, it was not as noble persons but as buffoons. The 1840s saw the rise of minstrelsy, in which mostly white, but also black, performers sang and danced while made up in blackface, achieved by smearing coal on the face. Minstrel shows remained popular until the early twentieth century. Also wildly popular in mid-century were "Tom Shows," melodramatic productions based on Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Other forms of diversion included vaudeville, which boasted such performers as Eddie Foy, W. C. Fields, and Sophie Tucker. P. T. Barnum sponsored singing tours by the "Swedish Nightingale," Jenny Lind, and opened the American Museum (1842) in New York City where he exhibited such freakish attractions as "Tom Thumb" and the Siamese twins Chang and Eng. Barnum, along with James A. Bailey, founded the Barnum and Bailey Circus in 1881.

Wild West shows were in vogue, especially Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, organized by former Pony Express rider William Frederick Cody in 1883. Cody's Cowboy and Indian show toured throughout the United States and Europe. Showboats were also a popular venue for all manner of entertainment from vaudeville to Shakespeare.

Theater of the Gilded Age

The last thirty years of the 1800s, often referred to as the "Gilded Age," were dominated by melodrama. Many Civil War plays were produced; they often focused on romances between Northern and Southern lovers but skirted the political issues of the war. Nonetheless, American theater was edging ever closer to the realistic style of performance that would come to dominate it in the twentieth century.

A trend in late-nineteenth-century drama, attributed largely to California-born manager/playwright/producer David Belasco, was to greatly enhance the production values of a play. Belasco built enormous and spectacular three-dimensional sets that he deemed naturalistic. Belasco was among the forerunners of a small group of producers who were breaking away from the romantic style of acting that marked the nineteenth century as well. These producer/directors encouraged actors to perform in a naturalistic style that suited the actors' own personalities.

By 1888, it was estimated that there were more than 2,400 professional actors in the United States. A few earned as much as $100,000 a year—a tremendous amount at the time. Among the highly paid actors were many who came from theatrical families, including descendents of the Booths, the Davenports, the Jeffersons, and the Drew-Barrymores (Lionel, Ethel, and John Barrymore all worked on the New York stage in the early twentieth century). Lesser-known performers were often badly treated; sometimes no pay was given for weeks or even months of rehearsal. Thus, in 1894, the Actors' Society of America, later Actors' Equity, was formed to negotiate standard contracts for actors. Even before this, other stage employees organized unions.

The number of actors grew to around 15,000 at the turn of the twentieth century. Along with the increase in actors came an increase in acting schools. Among the first was the Lyceum Theatre School, founded in New York City in 1884 and renamed the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1892. The American Academy of Dramatic Arts remains perhaps the most prestigious acting school in the country.

In the mid-nineteenth century, stock companies rose in number and often traveled. The opening of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869 meant that productions could travel to the West Coast. Soon companies stopped developing a large number of new plays and instead produced long runs of a single, popular play that they often took on tour. By the early 1870s, there were about 50 resident stock companies in the country. In 1886, a group of booking agents and managers formed a partnership known as the Theatrical Trust (or Syndicate). For approximately thirty years, the Syndicate controlled virtually all bookings at professional theaters. Over 1,700 theaters were available to touring productions in 1905, according to Julius Cahn's Official Theatrical Guide, making the Syndicate's sphere of influence very great indeed. By the turn of the twentieth century, resident stock companies were nearly nonexistent.

A challenge to the Syndicate's authority came from independent producer David Belasco, who wanted to stage a play set in Japan at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis and was blocked by the syndicate. Belasco booked a theater anyway and, typically, the Syndicate mounted a rival play on the same topic as Belasco's. Even an antitrust suit, filed after the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 became law, failed to loosen the Syndicate's grip. What did finally stop the Syndicate was another group of theatrical monopolists, the New York–based Shubert brothers—Lee, Sam S., and Jacob J. The Shuberts, who initially worked with the Syndicate, eventually joined forces with David Belasco, actress Minnie Maddern Fiske, and others to overturn it.

The nineteenth century did see some accomplished American playwrights, including Edward Harrigan, William Dean Howells, and Steele MacKaye. However, the time and country that produced such memorable writers in other genres as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Henry David Thoreau failed to nurture a truly great playwright until the twentieth century.

Theatre in the Early Twentieth Century

The early twentieth century mostly saw a continuation of commercialization and lack of originality in the theater. Melodrama, with subjects ranging from historical to romantic to Western to mystery, remained the form most often performed. Touring ceased to be the main way in which plays were presented and stock companies again formed. The continuing prosperity of America was reflected in the theater, and by 1912 there were some 8,000 theaters in America. By then, activities were focused in New York, especially off Times Square. Many of the theaters built during the boom of the 1920s were still used in 2002.

With the exception of some suffragist actresses, there were very few performers involved in political causes. However, in the Chicago slums, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr recognized the possibilities of theater as a force for social good and opened Hull House in 1889 as an alternative entertainment for impoverished youth. Similar theaters followed, including the Henry Street Settlement in New York.

As more and more of the theatergoing public became exposed to the work of such groundbreaking European playwrights as Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, and George Bernard Shaw, a small but active theater intelligentsia was formed that looked for more sophisticated plays. In the teens, "Little Theaters" began to open around the country. Some of these were formed for the purpose of offering standard commercial fare at cut rates, but many were formed with a higher purpose in mind—to produce serious, realist drama. These little theaters, including Chicago's Little Theatre, New York's Neighborhood Playhouse and Washington Square Players, and the Cleveland Playhouse featured work by both contemporary European and American playwrights and were modeled after European art theaters such as the Moscow Art Theatre and Dublin's Abbey Theatre. American performances by these two theater companies and others greatly influenced the style of acting in America further toward naturalism.

In Massachusetts, the Provincetown Players were developing the early short sea plays (set on the sea) of the only American playwright ever to win a Nobel Prize (1936), Eugene O'Neill. O'Neill was the son of James O'Neill, a famous actor who felt he had squandered his talent playing mostly one role, in The Count of Monte Cristo, throughout his career. The plays were taken to New York and the Provincetown Players began a tradition of developing plays out of town before a New York opening. O'Neill was the first of many great American playwrights to work in the twentieth century. He is credited with first perfecting the realist voice of the American stage.

During the 1930s, the Great Depression brought a far greater interest in political theater. Such groups as the International Ladies Garment Workers Union put on plays, and even the government got into the act through the federally sponsored and ill-fated Federal Theatre Project, which attempted to put 13,000 theater people on the government payroll. Meanwhile, the unions were represented by playwright Clifford Odets in his Waiting for Lefty on the legitimate stage. Lillian Hellman and Thornton Wilder were among the other prominent playwrights of the time.

The postwar 1940s were also a fascinating time for theater. It was then that the heartbreaking dramas of Mississippi playwright Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie (1945) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), were staged. Marlon Brando, who studied the Stanislavski System of acting originated at the Moscow Art Theatre and taught at The Actors Studio (opened 1947), became an overnight sensation after starring in A Streetcar Named Desire. His intimate performance not only led to a long film career but also had a great influence on the way American actors performed.

Arthur Miller debuted works that deal with government corruption (All My Sons, 1947), the alienation of modern man (Death of a Salesman, 1949), and manipulation of public opinion through the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings of the early 1950s (The Crucible, 1953). In 1947, Julian Beck and Judith Malina formed the Living Theatre, an experimental theater devoted to producing avant-garde plays that promoted the ideals of pacifism and anarchy.

The 1940s also saw the development of the American musical, starting with Oklahoma (1943), written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein and choreographed by Agnes DeMille. Other musicals included Brigadoon (1947) and My Fair Lady (1956), by the team of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, and West Side Story (1957) by Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents, and later, Sweeney Todd (1979), by Stephen Sondheim. The musical was to become the most American of theatrical genres; immense productions began to dominate the large theaters in New York by the 1950s and continue to do so.

Theatre in the Late Twentieth Century

The Civil Rights Movement, the war in Vietnam, and the other upheavals of the 1960s provided a rich time for theater. Playwrights including Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones) championed the Black Arts Movement with such in-your-face plays as Dutchman (1964), in which a white woman stabs a black man on a subway. David Rabe wrote about Vietnam in Stick and Bones (1971). The 1960s also saw the first of many plays dealing openly with homosexuality. The Boys in the Band premiered in 1968. Later plays to deal with the subject included Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart (1985) and Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize–winning two-part epic, Angels in America (1991,1993). The 1960s also ushered in the work of Neil Simon, probably the most popular writer of comedies in the late twentieth century.

Among other important playwrights of the last part of the century, California born and raised Sam Shepard writes plays about those who, like himself, rejected the mores of polite society; Christopher Durang lampoons the Catholic church that he was raised in; and Marsha Norman writes of a woman so disconnected she is planning suicide ('night Mother, 1982). Performance artists such as Karen Findley, whose work dealt with her own sexuality, Anna Deavere Smith, who explores social issues such as Black-Jewish relationships, and performer/musician Laurie Anderson rose to prominence in the 1980s.

Many of these performances were produced Off Broadway, including the New York Shakespeare Festival, founded in 1954 by Joseph Papp for the purpose of mounting Shakespeare productions in Central Park that were free and open to the public each summer. When Papp died in 1991, the innovative African American director George C. Wolfe became director of the festival. Papp also produced the surprise hit hippie musical of 1967, Hair, at his not-for-profit Public Theater. Hair was then moved to Broadway and the profits used for other, less commercial productions.

Broadway is still dominated by musicals and revivals of musicals, and it has seen a tremendous decline since the 1980s, largely because of escalating costs in mounting a production. In the 1950s, a grand musical such as My Fair Lady might have cost half a million dollars to produce, and tickets were less than ten dollars each. By the end of the twentieth century, costs soared so that a musical such as The Lion King (1997) could cost $15 million to produce and a ticket could cost up to $100.

Broadway budgets and ticket prices have long provided much of the momentum for Off Broadway and later for even smaller—less than 100-seat—houses called Off Off Broadway. Greenwich Village's Caffe Cino, founded in 1958 by Joe Cino, is generally thought to be the birthplace of Off Off Broadway, but Off Off Broadway's most enduring and important producer is Ellen Stewart of Café La Mama, which was founded in 1962, and renamed the La Mama Experimental Theater Club. Stewart is known for giving fresh voices a place in her theater, not because she likes the script—she often does not read them in advance—but rather because she has a good feeling about the person bringing an idea for a production to her. Off and Off Off Broadway venues, in addition to many regional theaters including Steppenwolf in Chicago, Magic Theater in San Francisco, and repertory companies including Yale Repertory Theater, American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, Missouri Repertory Theater, and Chicago's Goodman Theater, are thought by many to be the most exciting places to view theater in the twenty-first century.

Bibliography

Blum, Daniel. Great Stars of the American Stage: A Pictorial Record. New York: Greenberg, 1952.

Brustein, Robert. Reimagining American Theatre. New York: Hill and Wang, 1991.

Henderson, Mary C. Theater in America: 250 Years of Plays, Players, and Productions. New York: Abrams, 1996.

Hischak, Thomas S. American Theatre: A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama, 1969–2000. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Londre, Felicia Hardison, and Daniel J. Watermeier. The History of North American Theater: From Pre-Columbian Times to the Present. New York: Continuum Publishing, 1998.

Lorca Peress contributed information on Off Off Broadway.

Although modern theater in Russia was imported from Europe in the seventeenth century, earlier traditions demonstrate the importance of spectacle in Russian lives. Russians participated in numerous rituals associated with life transitions, such as marriages, births, and deaths, as well as seasonal agricultural rites. These rituals had both pre-Christian and Christian origins. From the eleventh until the mid-eighteenth century, both elite and peasant Russians were most often entertained by skoromokhi, musicians whose singing, dancing, puppetry, acrobatics, and animal acts included bawdy material that was reviled by the Russian Orthodox Church. Western-style theater arrived in Russia in the mid-seventeenth century when Tsar Alexei and his court enjoyed numerous foreign performers in various genres, and the first court theater operated from 1672 to 1676.

Theater expanded as westernization accelerated in the eighteenth century. In addition to court theater, public theaters flourished in many cities in the first half of the century. The Kunst-Fuerst theater, considered the first public theater, staged translations using German actors from 1702 to 1706. Educational institutions established school theaters, the most influential of which operated in the Land Forces Cadet School. Its productions in the early 1750s included the works of Alexander Sumarokov (1718 - 1777), who also translated and directed plays in the style of classicism, the dominant trend in Europe at that time. Fyodor Volkov (1729 - 1763) organized a theater in Yaroslavl and moved his troupe to St. Petersburg in 1752. In 1756 Tsarina Elizabeth incorporated Volkov's troupe into the Russian State Theater (the future Alexandrinsky Theater). Sumarokov directed this first state-subsidized theater, and Volkov played the leads. Dramatic works of the era included comedies, chivalry tales, biblical adaptations, and plays that glorified the monarchy and Russian Empire. Monarchs typically believed that theater should serve a didactic function, an assumption that continued well into the twentieth century.

These trends continued during the reign of Catherine II in the second half of the eighteenth century. She built the Hermitage Theater in the Winter Palace. After the creation of the Imperial Theatrical School in 1779, Russian-born professional actors increasingly appeared on stage. Beginning in 1783 the Administration of Theaters oversaw and censored public theatrical activity. In addition to court theaters, St. Petersburg (and Moscow early in the next century) boasted heavily subsidized imperial theaters. Many provincial cities also maintained popular public (narodnye) theaters that reached a broad audience with a diverse repertoire. Count Peter Sheremetev and other wealthy nobles also operated private serfs' theaters, which did not come under state supervision. Playwright Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin (1745 - 1792) is credited as the founder of authentically Russian drama, best exemplified by his comedy The Minor (1781). Classicism eventually gave way to sentimentalism, a style that emphasized emotion over reason.

Under Nicholas I, who reigned from 1825 to 1855, the Imperial Theater Administration developed an extensive series of rules and regulations for all aspects of theatrical activity. In spite of severe censorship, several outstanding dramas were written in an increasingly realist style. Alexander Griboedov (1794 - 1829) completed Woe from Wit (1824), an examination of the alienation of young disillusioned army officers who were scorned by a corrupt and superficial Russian elite after the Napoleonic wars. Other major Russian writers of this era wrote plays along with other genres. Alexander Pushkin (1799 - 1837) penned dramatic scenes, most notably his tragedy Boris Godunov (1825), in verse form. Nikolai Gogol (1809 - 1852) wrote The Government Inspector (1836), his most acclaimed work that satirizes corrupt officials and the supercilious elite of a Russian provincial town who mistake a stranger for a government inspector. Ivan Turgenev (1818 - 1883), also a well-respected novelist, wrote several plays, including A Month in the Country (1849 - 1850), that depict the everyday life of the elite.

As plays achieved greater realism, the role of actors in the theatrical process changed. They too attempted to portray characters with greater naturalism, and as a result relied more on the author's original intention and less on their own embellishment of roles. This evolution occurred in influential theater schools affiliated with the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg and the Maly Theater in Moscow. The latter trained Mikhail Shchepkin (1788 - 1863), who is considered one of the greatest Russian actors. In the later part of the nineteenth century, new stars further developed the naturalist approach. The ranks increasingly included actresses, such as Maria Yermolova (1853 - 1928), Glikeria Fedotova (1846 - 1925), and Maria Savina (1854 - 1915). Their popularity was enhanced by the repertory system, whereby a theater with a permanent company alternated many productions, rather than the single, long-running play with contractual performers.

Alexander Ostrovsky (1823 - 1886) dominated playwriting in the 1860s and 1870s. His innovative depiction of all levels of society in his dramas was called "national realism" and often contrasted cruel, self-serving individuals with their simple, decent victims. He wrote almost fifty plays, including his most acclaimed, The Forest (1870). Another prominent playwright, Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin (1813 - 1906), followed the tradition of Gogol's satirical commentaries in Krechinsky's Wedding (1854), The Case (1861), and The Death of Tarelkin (1869). Later in the century, Leo Tolstoy (1828 - 1910), better known for his novels, wrote plays and adapted many of his didactic short stories for theater.

Popular and provincial theaters complemented developments in the nineteenth century. Circuses, Petrushka puppet shows, and fairground theaters (balagany) amused spectators. Provincial theaters offered a wide variety of genres in an effort to appeal to a wide audience. In the latter part of the century after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 and their increasing migration to urban areas, the people's theater movement emphasized theatrical performance as a means to enlighten the masses. Beginning in 1882, private commercial theaters, such as the Korsh, were allowed in the capital cities and elsewhere, but censorship continued to hinder problematic plays. Amateur troupes provided added opportunities for performances.

The undisputed turning point in Russian theater occurred when Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863 - 1938), an amateur actor and director, and Vladimir Nemirovich Danchenko (1858 - 1943), a playwright who also taught at the Philharmonic Drama School, joined forces and created the Moscow (Popular) Art Theater in 1898. In productions that reflected trends in Europe at the time, an overall conception of the director united all parts of a production: script, actors, movement, costumes, sets, and lights. They also tried to create the impression that audiences were observing real people with psychological depth in realistic circumstances by incorporating historically accurate costumes, sets, and props. These hallmarks of naturalism were most successful in productions of Anton Chekhov's (1860 - 1904) plays, but the theater also staged works by Maxim Gorky (1868 - 1936), Henrik Ibsen (1828 - 1906), Gerhart Hauptmann (1862 - 1946), and many others in its long history. The theater fostered many outstanding performers, including Ivan Moskvitin (1874 - 1956), Olga Knipper (1868 - 1959), and Mikhail Chekhov (1891 - 1955). In a series of studios, Stanislavsky experimented with actors' training and developed his "system," also known as the Method, which has had a profound impact on theater and film in the West.

The era of 1898 to 1929 was the richest period for Russian theater. Stanislavsky's pupil, Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874 - 1940), rejected naturalism and strove to maximize the theatrical elements of performances, an approach that did not always enamor him to the public or to performers such as Vera Kommissarzhevskaya (1864 - 1910), a great actress of the day. Evgeny Vakhtangov's (1883 - 1922) brief career culminated in his Princess Turandot (1922), an example of his style of fantastic realism, which bridged Vsevolod Meyer-hold's abstractions and Stanislavsky's naturalism. At the Kamerny Theater, Alexander Tairov (1885 - 1950) created an atmosphere for the expression of the deepest emotions of performers through movement rather than naturalistic acting. While writing plays and theatrical theory, Nikolai Evreinov (1879 - 1953) directed at Kommissarzhevskaya's theater and his own Crooked Mirror, an example of popular small theaters at that time. Symbolism, a neoromantic movement that arose in reaction to realism and emphasized aesthetics and the spiritual, influenced some of the era's important playwrights, including Leonid Andreyev (1871 - 1919), Fyodor Sologub (1863 - 1927), and Alexander Blok (1880 - 1921).

Following the Russian Revolution in October 1917, theater experienced an outpouring of innovation. Theaters were divided into two groups: former important theaters became academic theaters with substantial subsidies and considerable freedom, while smaller theaters received less support with greater controls. In 1923 the government established Glavrepertkom, the organization responsible for censorship over theaters. Meyerhold developed his theory of movement known as biomechanics. Increasingly influenced by cubism and constructivism, he and other directors of the day often turned to abstract artists, such as Lyubov Popova (1889 - 1924) for set designs. The Jewish Habima Theater and the Moscow State Yiddish Theater also flourished. Important playwrights including Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893 - 1930), Mikhail Bulgakov (1891 - 1940), Nikolai Erdman (1901 - 1970), and Sergei Tretyakov (1892 - 1939) offered critiques of the young Soviet society.

Popular participation in theater exploded at this time. Proletkult, an organization that called for a new culture by and for workers, supported such activities as TRAM (Theaters for Working Youth), whose actors worked in chosen professions by day and rehearsed and performed during their free time. Other amateur troupes formed in army units, factories, and local clubs. Their performances sometimes involved courtroom scenarios, known as agit-trials, with audiences as juries to debate current issues. Traveling companies of "living newspapers" and "blue blouses" performed a series of short skits of news and other issues to illiterate audiences. Amateurs and professionals worked together to realize "mass spectacles" that recreated major historical events, such as The Storming of the Winter Palace (1920), which involved five hundred musicians, eight thousand performers, and over one hundred thousand spectators.

As Communist Party controls tightened in the 1930s, theater and all arts were expected to follow the guidelines of socialist realism, which called for upholding Communist Party policies in an easily understandable realist style. This highly didactic formula presented "positive heroes" for the public to emulate, and plays always pointed toward an optimistic socialist future. Experimentation in text and technique ended. In this environment playwrights such as Nikolai Pogodin (1900 - 1962), Alexander Afinogenov (1904 - 1941), Vsevolod Vishnevsky (1900 - 1951), and Alexei Arbuzov (1908 - 1986) managed to create meaningful dramas in spite of the limitations. A new generation of directors also attempted to offer interesting but safe productions: Nikolai Okhlopkov (1900 - 1967), Yuri Zavadsky (1894 - 1977), and Nikolai Akimov (1901 - 1968). Others suffered. Accused of "formalism," a euphemism for nonconformity, Meyerhold was executed in 1940. Playwrights Tretyakov and Vladimir Kirshon (1902 - 1938) met a similar fate. Tairov struggled to stage permissible plays. TRAM theaters came under state control as professional Komsomol theaters.

Although many professional troupes performed for frontline troops and new plays supported the war effort during World War II from 1941 to 1945, strict controls were reestablished after the war until Josef Stalin's death in 1953. Tairov was removed as director of his Kamerny Theater in 1949. As part of the rootless cosmopolitan campaign predominantly against Jews, Solomon Mikhoels (1890 - 1948), a famous actor and head of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, was killed. Dramatists were expected to adopt the no-conflict theory that corresponded to the supposedly new level of socialist achievement in the Soviet Union: no longer was society divided into bad opponents of the system and good supporters. Now socialism and drama reflected struggles between the good and the better. Without meaningful conflict, the quality of drama declined. Theater attendance fell, and the party renounced the theory in 1952.

The period following Stalin's death is considered the Thaw in Soviet society and culture. In the theatrical realm Glavrepertkom was abolished, and the Ministry of Culture assumed responsibility for censorship. Although socialist realism continued, theaters increasingly staged productions with nonrealist sets and pessimistic or ambiguous endings. Productions also began to breach the "fourth wall" by incorporating the audience in the action. Two important theaters emerged: the newly created Sovremennik under the leadership of Oleg Efremov (1927 - 2000) and the Taganka led by Yuri Lyubimov (b. 1917), whose group of recent theater school graduates performed Bertolt Brecht's Good Person of Sechuan and revived the moribund troupe. Its later productions included adaptations of Yuri Trifonov's (1925 - 1981) prose works and recent poetry by Andrey Voznesensky (b. 1933) and Yevgeny Yevtushenko (b. 1933). The Sovremennik emphasized new playwrights such as Viktor Rozov (b. 1913) and Vasily Aksenov (b. 1932). At the same time, talented directors Anatoly Efros (1925 - 1987) and Georgy Tovstonogov (1915 - 1989) took the helm at reputable theaters. Arbuzov and young dramatists, such as Alexander Vampilov (1937 - 1972), Alexander Volodin (b. 1919), and Eduard Radzinsky (b.1936), explored the dilemmas of everyday life. Many recent foreign dramatists were published in translation. Student theaters thrived.

After Nikita Khrushchev's fall from power in 1964, a more conservative approach to the arts ensued, but innovation continued. Although important directors continued to work, Efros and Lyubimov repeatedly had their productions banned or censured by the press. While socialist realism represented official policy, synthetic theater, which emphasized the use of music and lighting to augment the emotions and messages of a production, allowed greater flexibility in staging. By the early 1980s most professional theaters in Leningrad and Moscow created "second stages" that allowed for further experimentation. In this venue promising directors, such as Lev Dodin (b. 1944), Kama Ginkas (b. 1941), and Peter Fomenko (b. 1932), could stage new works, and young actors gained valuable experience because important roles on the main stage were reserved for senior performers. On the Taganka's small stage, Anatoly Vasilev (b. 1942) staged Viktor Slavkin's Cerceau, considered one of the most innovative productions of the 1980s. Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's (b. 1938) plays, whose language has been described as "tape recorder" for its ability to copy natural speech, were first performed by amateurs. Both playwrights addressed the elusive nature of a meaningful life in modern Soviet society. Amateur stages provided rich alternatives for both professional and amateur directors as well as spectators who were seeking new approaches to theater.

The final decade of the Soviet era began with severe censorship, but the twentieth century ended with almost complete freedom. In 1982 Yuri Andropov became General Secretary of the party, and initiated a strict anti-Western policy that adversely affected theatrical repertoires. Under his successor, Konstantin Chernenko, Yuri Lyubimov was forced into exile in 1984. Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost policy reversed this trend, and by 1989 theaters operated without political censorship. Theaters attempted to operate under self-financing, which removed governmental subsidies. Lenin Komsomol Theater director Mark Zakharov (b. 1933) led the effort to establish independence for troupes. The number of theaters mushroomed when the government allowed the formation of theaters without official supervision. However, the success of some troupes depended on those earlier conflicts with the state, and Lyubimov's return to the Taganka in 1989 could not revive its former glory. The Moscow Art Theater split into two companies: Chekhov MAT, led by Oleg Efremov, who had led the combined troupe since 1970; and Gorky MAT, led by Tatyana Doronina (b. 1933). In the 1990s Vasilev and Fomenko formed their own troupes to accommodate their unorthodox approaches to rehearsals and performances. Like many troupes desperate for funds, Dodin's theater toured abroad extensively and was awarded the Europe Theater prize in 2000. However, most troupes, including former amateur companies, discovered the near impossibility of surviving without some government subsidy and sought to receive some support while retaining repertory freedom. Since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian theater has operated under an economic censor, as in the West.

Bibliography

Braun, E. (1995). Meyerhold: A Revolution in Theatre. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

Gorchakov, Nikolai A. (1957). The Theater in Soviet Russia, tr. Edgar Lehrman. New York: Columbia University Press.

Karlinsky, Simon. (1985). Russian Drama from its Beginnings to the Age of Pushkin. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Leach, Robert, and Borovsky, Viktor, eds. (1999). A History of the Russian Theatre. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Mally, Lynn. (2000). Revolutionary Acts: Amateur Theater and the Soviet State 1917 - 1938. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Segel, Harold B. (1993). Twentieth-Century Russian Drama from Gorky to the Present, updated ed. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Slonim, Mark. (1962). Russian Theater from the Empire to the Soviets. New York: Collier Books.

Smeliansky, Anatoly. (1999). The Russian Theatre after Stalin, tr. Patrick Miles. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Warner, Elizabeth. (1977). The Russian Folk Theatre. The Hague: Mouton.

Worrall, Nick. (1989). Modernism to Realism on the Soviet Stage: Tairov-Vakhtangov-Okhlopkov. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

—SUSAN COSTANZO

Overview of the region's numerous traditional and indigenous dramatic art forms and performances.

The Middle East comprises four regions: The Arab world (22 countries), Iran, Turkey, and Israel. This area did not know theater (in the Western sense of a space containing stage and auditorium, and dramas with the three unities of time, space, and plot) in its pre-modern periods. However, the whole region had numerous traditional and indigenous dramatic art forms and performances. Through colonialism and cultural exchanges with Europe in the early nineteenth century, theater as a space and a mode of writing and presenting found its way into the various Middle Eastern cultures. In the modern period, as a form of cultural identity, many Middle Eastern theater artists have tried to honor their traditional art forms and rituals by incorporating aspects of them with their stage events. This endeavor is a prevalent feature, and an ongoing trend, in Middle Eastern theater.

Arab Theater

The ancient Arab literary tradition did not encompass dramatic texts; however, the countries that constitute today's Arab world have always incorporated dramatic and mimetic arts within their performance and literary traditions. Among the various Arab performance arts that thrived throughout the pre-modern periods are al-hakawati (storytellers), dance, ritual reenactments, shadow plays, puppetry, poetry recitations, maqama (outdoor dramatic enactments in poetry and prose), street performance by traveling troupes called al-muhabizun, and al-samir (village gatherings that included dramatizations). Many of these art forms continue, albeit in a state of decline, but others have died away as a result of competing modern entertainment.

In the nineteenth century, contact with the European theatrical tradition through colonialism, educational exchanges, and translations sparked a theatrical movement in the Arab world. In 1848, the Lebanese writer Marun al-Naqqash (d. 1855) mounted in his own home performances of plays based on Molière's dramas as well as adaptations of tales from A Thousand and One Nights. This process was continued in Damascus by Abu Khalil al-Qabbani (d. 1902), whose attempts to stage dramatic performances aroused the opposition of the religious establishment. Al-Qabbani moved to Egypt, where artists were able to exercise more freedom.

In Egypt, Yaʿqub Sanu (d. 1912), considered by many the father of Egyptian theater, formed a troupe of actors and in 1870 opened the first Egyptian playhouse under the auspices of the khedive. Sanu wrote and directed his own plays and introduced women to the Egyptian stage for the first time. His theater was an immediate success but was closed down by the authorities in 1873 on the grounds that his plays were politically subversive.

By the turn of the century, many theater troupes were presenting musicals, dramatic adaptations, and Arabizations of world drama, but no original plays in Arabic. A number of Egyptian poets wrote verse dramas; among them was the poet laureate of Egypt, Ahmad Shawqi. However, those plays were not stage successes, since their poetic merit exceeded their dramatic construction.

The towering figure of prose drama in Egypt and the Arab world is Tawfiq al-Hakim (1898 - 1986). His family sent him to France to obtain a doctorate in law. Instead, he spent his time there learning the Western theater tradition. When he returned to Egypt, he took up writing for the stage. His dearest wish was to establish a modern Egyptian dramatic tradition based on Western notions of the unity of space, time, and action. He spent five decades of his life working to enrich the Arab dramatic tradition, and enrich it he did. He wrote more than seventy plays of exceptional variety, experimenting with dramatic form and offering various dramatic styles. He also presented a variety of dramatic themes, some of which he categorized as the theater of ideas, the theater of social themes, and the theater of the absurd.

During the second half of the nineteenth century, many young playwrights emerged, theaters were built, and theater troupes were established around the Arab world. The 1960s is regarded as the golden age of Arabic theater for its impressive theatrical movement, which gave rise to great playwrights, actors, and directors throughout the region, including Nuʿman Ashur, Yusuf Idris, Alfred Farag, Mikhaʾil Ruman, and Najib Surur in Egypt; Saʿdallah Wannus, Walid Ikhlassi, and Yusuf al-Ani in Syria and Iraq; Isam Mahfuz and Roger Assaf in Lebanon; and Izz al-Din al-Madani, Ahmad al-Ilj, and al-Tayyib al-Siddiqi in the Maghrib.

In Palestine, under the watchful eye of the Israeli armed forces, theater troupes like the Balalin and Hakawati have produced highly experimental dramas that comment on the plight of their fellow countrymen. Alongside the male dramatists, directors, and critics, a large number of Arab women have contributed to the modern Arab stage, including playwrights Fathiyya al-Assal, Nehad Gad, Andre Chided, and Nawal al-Saadawi; director Nidal al-Ashqar; and critic Nehad Selaiha.

Israeli Theater

The Israeli theater is essentially modern; whereas pre-1960s theater was heavily influenced by Russian social realism, in the 1960s it diverged and presented experimental drama. Until the early 1970s, most of the theatrical repertoire in Israel continued to be European classics and modern plays. However, in the 1970s and 1980s, playwrights focused more on the contemporary Israeli's predicament and identity. From the 1980s onward a shift became noticeable in the Hebrew stage, from a