Week 3

"What is theatre? How do you think theatre, as a media form, communicates messages to its audience?"

Theatre 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. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance. Elements of design and stagecraft are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. Modern Western theatre derives 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 scholar 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.

Theatre is a media from because it is clear and the message is direct bring to the audience and it can communicate to specific audience in verbal and non-verbal communications. In thinking of theatre as performance, as a means of communication, one cannot ignore the architectural medium, since the architectural structure mediates the relation between performance and audience, just as the performance mediates the relations between the message to be communicated and its recipients. Theatre groups can create space for storytelling and discussing because such theatre can convey information and still remain popular and entertaining too.  It is relatively easy to create a play which is readily accessible to most communities, since there is no need for complicated or expensive technology or equipment.

Theatre is grabbing the attention and interest of a great number of people. This is because theatre is performed live and based on reality. It combines oral communication, physical expression, dance, image, music and song, which work together to maintain people’s interest over time.

Theatre is live and human: it uses voice, speech, language, the body and motion. It brings life and human reality to the audience. It makes people think and respond. Theatre plays a good communication form with the audience.