Theatre

Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers 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. Elements of art and stagecraft are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. The specific place of the performance is also named by the word "theatre" as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, "a place for viewing"), itself from θεάομαι (theáomai, "to see", "to watch", "to observe").

Modern Western theatre comes, in large measure, from ancient Greek drama, from which it borrows technical terminology, classification into genres, and many of its themes, stock characters, and plot elements. Theatre artist Patrice Pavis defines theatricality, theatrical language, stage writing, and the specificity of theatre as synonymous expressions that differentiate theatre from the other performing arts, literature, and the arts in general.

Shakespeare Theatre Company

The Shakespeare Theatre Company is a regional theatre company located in Washington, D.C. The theatre company focuses primarily on plays from the Shakespeare canon, but its seasons include works by other classic playwrights such as Euripides, Ibsen, Wilde, Shaw, Schiller, Coward and Tennessee Williams. The company manages and performs in the Harman Center for the Arts, consisting of the Lansburgh Theatre and Sidney Harman Hall. In cooperation with George Washington University, they run the Academy for Classical Acting.

The company is a member of the League of Resident Theatres.

History

The Folger Shakespeare Library on Capitol Hill includes a replica of an Elizabethan theatre, originally used for lectures and tours. In 1970 this space was transformed into a functioning playhouse, and soon Folger Theatre Group (later The Folger Theatre) was organized to perform in the space.

After years of discussion, Amherst College, administering body of the Folger Shakespeare Library, in 1986 withdrew financial support for the company. To save the company, concerned citizens led by R. Robert Linowes reincorporated it as the non-profit Shakespeare Theatre at the Folger, later hiring Michael Kahn as artistic director. The company continued to perform at the Folger for the next six years.