Second term Topic 8. At the Theatre

Theatre is one of the oldest and most popular forms of entertainment, in which actors perform alive for an audience on a stage or in another space chosen for the performance. The actors, the audience, and the space are three essentials of theatre. The fourth is the performance, or the actors’ creative work in production. The performance is very often a play – tragedy, comedy, or musical–but it need not be. Theatre performances include vaudeville, puppet shows, mime, and other forms of entertainment.

Theatre historians trace the origins of theatre to myth and ritual found in dances and mimed performances by masked dancers during rituals and other ceremonies that marked important passages in life. Early societies acted out patterns of life, death, and rebirth associated with the welfare of village tribes. At some unrecorded time, these ceremonies and rituals turned into dramatic festivals and spread west from Greece and east from India.

In addition to the actor and the audience in a space, other elements of theatre are a written or improvised text, costumes, scenery, lights, sound, and properties (props). Most theatrical performances require the collaborative efforts of many creative people working toward a common goal: the production.

Theatre can serve many purposes. It can be designed to entertain, instruct, motivate, persuade, and even shock. But whatever the intentions of the director, performers, and crew, the result depends on the interaction with an audience. The audience affects the performance by providing the performers with immediate feedback, such as laughter, tears, applause, or silence. Each night there is a continuous interaction between the auditorium and the stage.

Some audiences want only to be entertained. Others want the theatre to provide new insight and understanding of political, social, or personal issues. Throughout history theatre has reflected the society in which it takes place. In many repressive and authoritarian regimes theatre provides entertainment to distract audiences from the brutal conditions under which they live or to serve as lessons in the virtues of the ruling powers.

Theatre is a diverse and complex art. It requires collaboration among many artists, craftspeople, and managers in order to create a performance for audiences. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, theatrical events have included such production elements as costumes, scenery, properties, music, and choreography. Lighting and sound are more recent additions. Each element in today's theatre has its own designer, composer, or choreographer, who collaborates with the director to focus the audience's attention on the actor in the special environment or seeing place.

Grammar

1. State the number of the sentences in Present Simple Tense.

1. He went there yesterday. 2. We live in Donetsk. 3. She likes to go to the theatre. 4. Do you study at school? 5. Did my mother work last year? 6. My father works at a factory. 7. Pete’s sister does not work. 8. She studies at the institute. 9. He will go to the cinema tomorrow.