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//**Some Brief Facts on the Matter**//
What does one start to think of, when he or she hears "theatre"? What kind of associations arise in the underself? If we hold a survey on this topic and ask people to announce the first thing stricking their mind, we would probably hear "stage", "acting", "perfomance", "drama", or even "Ancient Greece" or "Shakespear". Which associations did YOU have? Actually, being one of the oldest and, no doubt, one of the most popular forms of entertainment, the theatre has overlived all the others, though having appeared in the Ancient times. "Anthropologists and theater historians trace the origins of theater to myth and ritual found in dances and mimed performances by masked dancers during fertility rites 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. Imitation, costumes, masks, makeup, gesture, dance, music, and pantomime were some of the theatrical elements found in early rituals. At some unrecorded time, these ceremonies and rituals became formalized in dramatic festivals and spread west from Greece and east from India", - states the Encarta Encyclopaedia. Just like hundreds of years ago, today the actors are to show some kind of a play (a tragedy, a comedy, or a musical) and to make its idea clear to the audience. The best actors begin to feel at home in one's role so much, that they seem to really feel what the present to the viewers. Their main aim is to provoke the feelings in people's hearts and thoughts in people's minds. However, I'm sure You have heard about all the mask, costumes and man-changing-into-women's-clothes things, so there is no need to be telling it all over again, as we are interested in what is happening now.



//**The Actual Purposes of the Modern Theatre**//
Theater can serve many ends. 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 for theater differs from the reader of a novel or the viewer of a painting in that it assembles as a group at a given time and place to share in the performance with the actors and all the surrounding elements of light, sound, music, costumes, and scenery. The audience affects the performance by providing the performers with immediate feedback, such as laughter, tears, applause, or silence. Each night there is continuous interaction between the auditorium and the stage. Some audiences want only to be entertained. Others want the theater to provide new insight and understanding about political, social, or personal issues. Throughout history theater has reflected and, at times, commented on the society in which it takes place. In many repressive and authoritarian regimes theater 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. Ultimately, audiences make their opinions known through their attendance or nonattendance. They support what appeals to them and generally fail to support what they find distasteful, offensive, or incomprehensible. The terms presentational theater and representational theater are often used to describe two different approaches to accomplishing the goals of a production. A presentational style offers a performance with full recognition that the actors are at work on a stage, speaking and acting out a script with music, under lights, and in costumes. There is no attempt to disguise the fact that a theatrical performance is taking place to entertain or instruct audiences. Plays from ancient Greece and from the time of English playwright William Shakespeare are produced in this forthright manner, as are many modern experimental plays. Musicals and traditional Asian theater also fall into this general category.



//**Modern Theatre Production**//
Theater 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 theater 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.



//**Theater Companies**//
Organizations that produce theater today range from commercial theaters in the West End in London, England, to nonprofit resident companies subsidized by boards of directors, government agencies, and corporations. Commercial producers organize single productions, such as The Sound of Music, The Phantom of the Opera, or Ragtime, for the purpose of staging the work and making money for investors. Educational theater programs and amateur theaters organize their efforts in ways similar to commercial theaters. Resident theater companies, which typically are nonprofit organizations, produce a wide variety of works. Resident groups, composed of actors, directors, designers, craftspeople, and managers, are subsidized through the theater's box office, government grants, and contributions from businesses and individuals. Like commercial theaters, nonprofit companies are located all around the world. Some prominent examples are the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota; the Royal National Theatre in London; and the Moscow Art Theater in Russia. Unlike commercial theaters, which specialize in one production at a time, resident companies usually produce a season of plays in sequence, or several plays in repertory that are rotated week after week over a period of time.

//**National Royal Theatre**//
National Royal Theatre was built in response to over 100 years of campaigning for a national theater for the United Kingdom. The Royal National Theatre is a large complex located on London’s South Bank, designed by Sir Denys Lasdun. It was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II, its patron, on October 25, 1976. The theater was granted the Royal addition to its title in 1988. It is unique in having been built under a special Act of Parliament. The National Theatre Company, established in 1962, was housed at the Old Vic Theatre in south London until its new building was ready. The building contains three separate theaters, seating nearly 2500 people in all: the open-stage Olivier (named after the Company’s first director, Sir Laurence Olivier), the proscenium-stage Lyttelton, and the Cottesloe, a simple and adaptable rectangular room. There is also a studio, used as an experimental workshop that encourages new writing. The National Theatre aims to present a diverse repertoire of the highest standard, embracing classic, contemporary, and neglected plays from the whole of world drama. At any time, audiences can usually choose from at least six productions. The National offers many other events, including early evening platform performances, workshops for children and educational work, exhibitions, live music in the foyer, and backstage tours.



//**The Globe Theatre**//
The Globe Theatre is a famous theater in London where many of William Shakespeare’s best-known plays were first performed. It was built in 1599 on the south bank of the Thames River at Southwark by English actor Richard Burbage and others. When the lease of London’s oldest playhouse, The Theatre, expired in 1598, Burbage and his brother are believed to have dismantled its timbers and taken them by cart to the site on the Thames for building the Globe. The new theater had a globe on its roof and a quotation in Latin from the Roman writer Petronius, “Totus mundus agit historionem” (“All the world’s a stage”). Shakespeare was a shareholder in the Globe, and his career as a playwright was closely associated with the theater. The Globe also staged the first productions of dramatic works by English writers Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and others.

The Globe was polygonal (many-sided) and accommodated about 1,200 theatergoers. The outer wall of the theater enclosed a roofless inner pit, or yard. The stage projected into the pit, and the general audience stood on three sides of the stage and watched the play from the pit. Around the pit were three galleries (balconies) one above the other, the topmost of which was roofed with thatch. More prosperous customers could pay to sit in the galleries. Plays were performed during the day, as there was no lighting for evening performances. The audience, especially the people standing near the stage, became involved in the action, cheering the heroes and heroines and jeering the comic figures.

Scenery was minimal, consisting of little more than a few props or set pieces. The settings were probably created more vividly in the minds of the spectators by the suggestive, descriptive poetry of the plays. A gallery over the stage provided playing space for balcony scenes, tower battlements, and other actions. A curtain could also be drawn across the stage, dividing it into front and back.

The Globe opened with Shakespeare’s Henry V in 1599. In 1613 a cannon, discharged during a performance of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, set fire to the thatched roof and destroyed the building. The theater was rebuilt in 1614 but 30 years later was destroyed by the Puritans. In 1970 American actor and director Sam Wanamaker began raising funds to rebuild the Globe, and in 1997 the new theater, based on the design of the original structure, was opened.