Al- Warsha Theatre Company
Egyptian troupe, founded in 1987 by Hassan El-Geretly (its artistic director). Al-Warsha (Arabic for ‘workshop’) was the first and most financially secure of the non-commercial, independent companies ...
anti-play
A theatre work in which the creator sets out to subvert and counter the theatrical conventions of the day, e.g. by the use of long silences, inactivity, nonsequential plotting or ...
Antonin Artaud
(1896–1948)French actor, director, and drama theoretician, who originated the theory of the Theatre of Cruelty.Artaud was born in Marseilles and began his career as an actor. He became interested in ...
Aurélien-Marie Lugné-Poe
(1869–1940)French actor and director. His early acting carer was inauspicious, in Antoine's Théâtre Libre and Fort's Théâtre d'*Art; but at the latter he encountered the work of Maeterlinck, with ...
avant-garde
(Fr. ‘vanguard’).Term used in the arts to denote those who make a radical departure from tradition. In 20th‐cent. mus., Stockhausen may be regarded as avant‐garde, but not Shostakovich.
Cacá Rosset
(1954– )Brazilian director, actor, and television personality. With Luiz Roberto Galizia and Alice Vergueiro, Rosset founded Teatro Ornitorrinco (Platypus Theatre) in 1977. He became known for his ...
Eugène Ionesco
(1912–94), playwright.The French‐Romanian playwright, an exponent of the Theatre of the Absurd, has been a favorite of Off‐Broadway companies and collegiate and regional theatres since the early ...
Fernando Arrabal
(1932– )Spanish playwright, novelist, and filmmaker. After a traumatic childhood and law studies, he moved to Paris, where he became linked with the theatre of the absurd through French versions ...
Gémier Firmin
(b. Aubervilliers, France, 21 Feb. 1869; d. Paris, 26 Nov. 1933)Actor, director and teacher who made his début with Antoine (Théâtre Libre, then Théâtre de l'œuvre, where he played ...
International Centre for Theatre Research
Theatre company, founded in 1970 by Peter Brook and administrator Micheline Rozan. The centre is a multicultural theatre research and production group based since 1974 at the Bouffes du Nord ...
Jan Grossman
(1925–93)Czech director and critic, for the greater part of his life ostracized and persecuted by the communist regime. First esteemed for his intelligent criticism (including influential ...
Jean-Claude Grumberg
(b. Paris, 1939)Playwright, director and actor. Grumberg's plays combine formal experiment with social comment, exposing past and present racism and intolerance. Plays include Dreyfus (1973), En ...
Max Wall
(1908–90)English comedian and actor. Wall began his career in the 1920s as ‘Max Wall and his Independent Legs’, establishing a distinctive style of grotesque and sometimes menacing clowning. He ...
melodrama
Originally, a stage-play (typically romantic and sensational in plot and incident) with songs interspersed and action accompanied by appropriate orchestral music. As the musical element ceased to be ...
Oberiu
Russian/Soviet organization and movement, an acronym for Obshchestvo real'nogo iskusstva (Association for Real Art). Founded by Daniil Kharms, Aleksandr Vvedensky, and others in 1927, its goal was to ...
publishing of plays
The printing press had many complex effects on Western theatre. The coincidence of a printing industry, a reading public, and a competitive commercial theatre created new channels for theatrical and ...
puppet theatre
The ‘puppet’ is defined as an inanimate object given life by human agency to project a dramatic idea or concept, and the term includes hand, string or marionette, shadow and ...
Rachilde
(1860–1953)French writer. Rachilde won notoriety for fiction whose inversion of gender roles caused her to be called ‘Mademoiselle Baudelaire’. The risqué image attracted symbolist writers to her ...
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
(1946–1982)German actor, writer, and one of Germany's most influential film directors.Born in Bad-Worrishofen, Fassbinder joined the Munich Action Theatre in 1967, after drama training, and in 1968 ...
Ridiculous Theatrical Company
American repertory company dedicated to the work of Charles Ludlam, who formed it in 1967. The core company included John D. Brockmeyer, Bill Vehr, Susan Carlson, and Lola Pashalinski. The ...
