Adrian Noble
(1950– )English director. Noble began working at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1980, and was its artistic director from 1991 to 2003. Almost all his work since 1982 was for ...
Aegeus
In Greek mythology, king of Athens and father of Theseus, who threw himself into the sea in the (mistaken) belief that his son had been killed by the Minotaur; according to some, this was the origin ...
Aeschylus
Athenian tragic poet (?525/4–456/5 bc). He fought in the battle of Marathon. His first tragic production was in 499, his first victory in 484. He gained thirteen victories altogether. His epitaph ...
Agathon
Of Athens was the most celebrated tragic poet after the three great masters. (See tragedy, greek.) He won his first victory in 416 bc, and the occasion of Plato's Symposium is a party at his house in ...
Aias
Son of Telamon, king of Salamis. He brought twelve ships from Salamis to Troy. In the Iliad he is enormous, head and shoulders above the rest, and the greatest Greek warrior after Achilles. His stock ...
Ajax
In Greek mythology, a hero of the Trojan war, the son of Telamon, king of Salamis; he was proverbial for his size and strength. After the death of Achilles, he quarrelled with Odysseus as to which of ...
Ajax
A: Sophocles Pf: c.441 bc, Athens Tr: 1714 G: Greek trag. in verse S: Before Ajax's tent and the seashore near Troy, during the Trojan War C: 6m, 2f, extras, chorus (m)When Achilles is killed in the ...
Alberto De Paz y Mateos
(1915–67)Spanish lawyer and director who moved to Venezuela in 1945. He formed an experimental troupe at a Caracas school (Grupo Experimental de Teatro del Liceo Fermín Toro), which had ...
Alcestis
In Greek mythology, wife of Admetus, king of Pherae in Thessaly, whose life she saved by consenting to die on his behalf. She was brought back from Hades by Hercules.
Alexander Moissi
(1880–1935),German actor of Italian extraction, born in Albania where a drama school has been named after him. He played his first speaking part in German at Prague in 1902 ...
Alexis Minotis
(1900–90),Greek actor and director, who made his first appearance on the stage in 1925, and in 1930 made his New York début as Orestes in a Greek production of ...
Alfred Roller
(b Brno, 1864; d Vienna, 1935).Austrian stage designer and painter. In 1890s helped to found Vienna Sezession with Schiele, Kokoschka, and Klimt. Prof. at Vienna School of Art 1900, orch. 1909–34. ...
Ali Ben Ayed
(1930–72)Tunisian actor, director, and manager who was central to the establishment of modern theatre in the country. In 1962 he was named manager of the Tunisian National Theatre, the ...
anagnorisis
[an‐ag‐nor‐ĭs‐is](plural‐ises)The Greek word for ‘recognition’ or ‘discovery’, used by Aristotle in his Poetics to denote the turning point in a drama at which a character (usually the protagonist) ...
ancient Greek theatre
1. Origins of theatre in Greece; 2. Late Archaic and Classical Greek theatre (508–317 bc); 3. Hellenistic theatre (317–86 bc); 4. Greek theatre under the Roman Empire (86 bc–ad 692); 5. Greek ...
André Gide
(1869–1951)French novelist, essayist, critic, and dramatist. His fiction, interesting both for its formal experimentation and its teasing exploration of sexuality and morality, includes a number of ...
Antigone
In Greek mythology, daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, the subject of a tragedy by Sophocles. She was sentenced to death for defying her uncle Creon, king of Thebes, by burying the ritually unburied ...
Antigone
A: Sophocles Pf: c.441 bc, Athens Tr: 1729 G: Greek trag. in verse S: Thebes, mythical past C: 4m, 3f, extras, chorus (m)The sons of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polyneices, have killed each other in a ...
Antoine Vitez
(b. Paris, 20 Dec. 1930; d. Paris, 30 April 1990)Actor, director and teacher. A student of Russian and Greek, he became a communist, wrote for Bref, the journal of ...
Aristarchus
Of Samothrace (c.216–144 bc), sat at the feet of Aristophanes of Byzantium at Alexandria. He became head of the Alexandrian Library c.153. On the accession of Ptolemy VIII (145) he left Alexandria ...
