Theater & Dance

Theater History

Greek and Hellenistic Theater

• City Dionysia — the major Athenian dramatic festival, held each spring in honor of Dionysus; tragedies were performed here competitively beginning around 534 BCE; playwrights submitted a tetralogy (three tragedies plus a satyr play). The Lenaia was a smaller winter festival focused on comedy.
• Satyr play — a short, bawdy comedy performed after the three tragedies at the City Dionysia; featured a chorus of satyrs (half-man, half-goat attendants of Dionysus); Sophocles’ Ichneutae and Euripides’ Cyclops are surviving examples.
• Dionysia — Athenian religious festival in honor of Dionysus, god of wine and theater; the context in which Greek tragedy and comedy were performed competitively beginning in the 6th century BCE.
• Orchestra — circular dancing/performance space at the center of the Greek theater; the chorus performed here.
• Skene — the stage building behind the orchestra; the origin of the word “scene.” Actors changed costumes and made entrances through it.
• Chorus — a group of performers who commented on the action, sang, and danced; a structural feature of Greek tragedy distinguishing it from later Western drama.
• Tragic conventions — deaths occurred offstage and were reported by a messenger; only three actors (with masks) played all roles; the plays observed (roughly) unity of time and place.
• Masks — worn by all performers; amplified voice and indicated character type; allowed male actors to play female roles.
• Aeschylus (c. 525–456 BCE) — the earliest surviving tragedian; credited with adding a second actor and reducing the role of the chorus. Best known for the Oresteia trilogy (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides), which dramatizes the murder of Agamemnon and its aftermath.
• Sophocles (c. 497–406 BCE) — added a third actor; wrote Oedipus Rex (the model of classical tragedy for Aristotle), Antigone, and Electra.
• Euripides (c. 480–406 BCE) — more psychologically complex characters; greater sympathy for women and outsiders; works include Medea, The Bacchae, and The Trojan Women.
• Aristophanes (c. 446–386 BCE) — master of Old Comedy; satirized politicians and intellectuals; works include The Clouds (mocking Socrates) and Lysistrata.
• Aristotle’s Poetics — defines tragedy as the imitation of a serious action arousing pity and fear, achieving catharsis; identifies hamartia (fatal flaw/error) and anagnorisis (recognition) as key elements.
• Menander (c. 342–290 BCE) — leading playwright of New Comedy; focused on domestic plots and stock characters; influenced Roman comedy.
• Deus ex machina — a theatrical device in Greek drama (and later); a god lowered by crane (mechane) to resolve an otherwise intractable plot; Euripides used it frequently, drawing Aristotle’s criticism.
• Thespis (6th century BCE) — traditionally credited as the first actor who stepped out of the chorus to take individual roles; the word “thespian” derives from his name.
• Theatron — the viewing area (seating) of the Greek theater, typically carved into a hillside; literally “the seeing place.”

Roman Theater

• Plautus (c. 254–184 BCE) — adapted Greek New Comedy for Roman audiences; works include Miles Gloriosus and Menaechmi (a source for Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors).
• Terence (c. 185–159 BCE) — refined Roman comedy with more sophisticated language; The Brothers (Adelphoe) explores contrasting parenting styles.
• Seneca (c. 4 BCE–65 CE) — wrote closet dramas (likely not staged) including Medea, Phaedra, and Thyestes; hugely influential on Elizabethan revenge tragedy through his themes of violence and rhetoric.
• Roman theater buildings — unlike Greek theaters built into hillsides, Roman theaters were freestanding stone structures; the cavea (seating) faced the scaena (elaborate backdrop).
• Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheatre) — though primarily an arena for gladiatorial combat, it represents the Roman investment in large-scale spectacle (ludi); theatrical performances moved to permanent stone theaters by the 1st century BCE.
• Fabula Atellana — a native Roman form of crude farce featuring stock masked characters (Pappus the old man, Maccus the fool, Bucco the braggart); predates Plautus and influenced commedia dell’arte.

Medieval Theater

• Mystery plays — medieval cycle dramas dramatizing episodes from the Bible (Creation to Last Judgment); performed by craft guilds on wagon stages (pageant wagons) at religious festivals. The major English cycles are York, Chester, Wakefield (Towneley), and N-Town.
• Morality plays — allegorical medieval dramas in which virtues and vices battle for a human soul; characters are personified abstractions (Good Deeds, Death, Knowledge). Everyman (c. 1510) is the most canonical: a man faces Death and discovers only Good Deeds will accompany him.
• The masque — elaborate English court entertainment of the 16th–17th centuries combining poetry, music, dance, and spectacular scenery; performers were often courtiers including royalty. Ben Jonson wrote many masques with designer Inigo Jones.
• Liturgical drama — the earliest medieval theater, performed in or near the church; the Quem Quaeritis trope (Easter dialogue asking “Whom do you seek?”) is the earliest surviving dramatic text in the Christian tradition.

Commedia dell’Arte

• Commedia dell’arte — Italian improvisational comedy tradition from the 16th century; traveling troupes; performed with stock characters and scenarios (lazzi) rather than fixed scripts.
• Stock characters (maschere) — Arlecchino (Harlequin: acrobatic servant, diamond-patterned costume), Pantalone (miserly Venetian merchant), Il Dottore (pompous doctor), Il Capitano (braggart soldier), and the innamorati (young lovers who did not wear masks).
• Columbina — the clever female servant in commedia dell’arte; witty, resourceful, often paired with Arlecchino; her name means “little dove.”
• Lazzi — the comic set pieces (slapstick routines, physical gags) in commedia dell’arte performance; repeated bits each troupe maintained in its repertoire.
• Legacy — influenced Molière, Goldoni, and eventually clown traditions; elements survive in modern physical comedy and pantomime.

Japanese Theater

• Noh (Nō) — the oldest major form of Japanese theater; a stylized, ritualistic musical drama that developed under court patronage in the 14th century. Performers wear carved wooden masks (in contrast to the makeup of kabuki) and all roles are played by men. The principal actor is the shite; actors enter along the hashigakari, a bridge-like passageway, onto a stage whose only fixed decoration is a painted pine tree backdrop. Noh combines speech, chant, dance, instrumental music, and mime to dramatize the spiritual or supernatural life of its central character (often a ghost or spirit). Comic interludes called kyōgen are performed between Noh plays. The genre was codified by Kan’ami (Kanami) and especially his son Zeami Motokiyo (1363–1443), the form’s greatest playwright and theorist, whose treatise Fūshikaden (The Transmission of the Flower, also called the Kadensho) sets out the principle of yūgen (subtle, mysterious beauty). Plays include Atsumori and Hagoromo (the feather-mantle play). W. B. Yeats’s At the Hawk’s Well (1916) was modeled on Noh.
• Kabuki — a popular, flamboyant form of Japanese theater whose name is written with characters meaning “song,” “dance,” and “skill” (and is also linked to kabuku, “to be unusual/shocking”). Traditionally credited to Okuni, a shrine attendant at Izumo who performed sensual dances on a dry Kyoto riverbed around 1603. After women and then young men were banned from the stage, adult male actors took all roles; the onnagata is the male actor who specializes in female parts. Kabuki is highly stylized, with elaborate makeup (kumadori), the bombastic aragoto (“rough”) acting style, the frozen climactic pose called the mie, and a runway called the hanamichi that extends through the audience (an evolution of the Noh hashigakari). It draws many plots from bunraku puppet theater, including the double-love-suicide (shinjū) plays of Chikamatsu Monzaemon; such plays were banned in 1723. Kabuki actors were a favorite subject of ukiyo-e prints (yakusha-e) by artists such as Tōshūsai Sharaku and Torii Kiyonobu.

Chinese, Korean, and Southeast Asian Performance

• Kunqu (Kun Qu) — Chinese theatrical tradition developed around Kunshan during the Ming dynasty, combining stylized singing, movement, drama, and instrumental accompaniment. The Peony Pavilion, by Tang Xianzu, is a central work. Its musical and bodily conventions connect literary drama to performance rather than treating a play as a script alone.
• Pansori — Korean musical storytelling performed by a singer and drummer. Singing, spoken narration, gesture, and interaction with listeners sustain extended narratives. Begin with Chunhyangga or Simcheongga, and compare how the singer gives voice to different characters within a single performance.
• Wayang kulit — Indonesian shadow-puppet theater. The dalang manipulates the puppets, narrates, voices characters, and directs the accompanying gamelan. Literary language, humor, music, and visual symbolism work together; compare a performance with the narrative it adapts.
• Khmer classical dance / Royal Ballet of Cambodia — a court-associated performance tradition distinguished by codified gesture, carefully controlled movement, and elaborate costume. Gesture and role conventions carry narrative meaning; its history and technique should be studied alongside, rather than folded into, European ballet.¹

African Performance and Community Context

Gèlèdé, practiced by Yoruba-Nago communities in Benin, Nigeria, and Togo, joins carved masks, dance, and Yoruba-language song in ceremonies honoring women and maternal powers. Historical narration, praise, satire, and community participation belong to the performance, so a mask displayed alone or a written script preserves only part of it. Compare these relationships among material art, music, bodies, and audience with the Asian performance traditions above, without treating all of Africa as one theatrical tradition. The existing Yoruba Gelede masquerade ensemble record can be studied in the Advanced art list.²

Elizabethan and Jacobean Stage

• Elizabethan playhouses — open-air, polygonal structures; the stage thrust into the yard where groundlings stood; wealthy patrons sat in galleries. The Globe Theatre (built 1599) is the most famous.
• Boy players — female roles were played by boy apprentices; women were banned from the English professional stage until 1660 (Restoration).
• Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) — major pre-Shakespearean playwright; Doctor Faustus (the scholar who sells his soul to Mephistopheles), Tamburlaine, and The Jew of Malta; popularized blank verse on the English stage.
• Ben Jonson (1572–1637) — rival and contemporary of Shakespeare; Volpone (greed and deception), The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair; also wrote court masques.
• John Webster (c. 1580–c. 1634) — Jacobean tragedian known for dark, violent revenge plays: The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil.
• Heinrich von Kleist (1777–1811) — German Romantic playwright; The Prince of Homburg (duty vs. individual will) and The Broken Jug (a comic inversion of the justice system); important precursor to psychological realism.
• Note on Shakespeare — covered in depth in the British Literature compendium; referenced here only for context.

Restoration and 18th-Century Theater

• Restoration comedy — after Charles II restored the monarchy (1660) and reopened theaters; characterized by wit, sexual intrigue, and social satire. William Congreve’s The Way of the World (1700) is the pinnacle.
• Women on stage — from 1660 onward, women acted professionally in England; Nell Gwyn was the most famous early actress.
• Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622–1673) — dominant French playwright of the 17th century; his troupes performed at Versailles for Louis XIV. Tartuffe (religious hypocrisy), The Misanthrope, The Miser (L’Avare), and The Would-Be Gentleman (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme). Tartuffe was banned twice before its authorized 1669 production.
• Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793) — Venetian playwright who reformed commedia dell’arte into scripted comedy of manners; The Servant of Two Masters.

Major Playwrights (Modern Era)

19th-Century Movements (Pre-Realism)

• Melodrama — a popular 19th-century theatrical genre featuring clear moral contrasts (virtuous heroes vs. villains), sensational plots, and musical underscoring; enormously popular in France and England; The Octoroon (Dion Boucicault) is a notable example. The term literally means “music-drama.”
• The well-made play (pièce bien faite) — a 19th-century dramatic formula associated with Eugène Scribe (1791–1861) and later Victorien Sardou; tightly constructed cause-and-effect plotting, withheld information, obligatory scene, and a neat resolution. Ibsen adapted and then subverted this structure.
• Naturalism — an extreme form of theatrical realism; playwright and theorist Émile Zola argued theater should apply scientific determinism to human behavior. Director André Antoine founded the Théâtre Libre (Paris, 1887) as a laboratory for naturalist production, using real objects and unglamourized working-class subjects.
• Georg Büchner (1813–1837) — German playwright who died at 23; Woyzeck (unfinished; a poor soldier exploited and driven to murder, a proto-naturalist and proto-expressionist work) and Danton’s Death; hugely influential on 20th-century drama.
• Symbolist theater — late-19th/early-20th-century reaction against naturalism; sought to evoke mood, mystery, and the inner life through poetic language and non-realistic staging. Maurice Maeterlinck (Pelléas et Mélisande, 1892) is the central playwright.
• Expressionist theater — early-20th-century movement (especially German) that distorted external reality to convey psychological states; fragmented dialogue, grotesque characters, dreamlike sequences. Ernst Toller (Man and Masses) and Georg Kaiser (Gas) are key figures; Strindberg’s later plays were a major influence.

19th-Century Realism

• Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) — Norwegian; father of modern prose drama. A Doll’s House (1879, Nora’s departure shocked Europe), Hedda Gabler, The Wild Duck, Ghosts (syphilis and heredity). Pioneered the well-made play structure and the retrospective technique (present action uncovers past secrets).
• August Strindberg (1849–1912) — Swedish; intense psychological drama; Miss Julie (class and gender conflict), The Father, and later expressionist work A Dream Play.
• Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) — Russian; mastered subtext and the drama of ordinary life. The Seagull (1896), Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard (1904, his last play). Collaborated extensively with director Konstantin Stanislavski at the Moscow Art Theatre.
• Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) — founded in 1898 by Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko; the institutional home of theatrical naturalism in Russia; its productions of Chekhov’s plays (beginning with the 1898 revival of The Seagull) defined the company’s identity; the seagull became its emblem.
• Konstantin Stanislavski (1863–1938) — co-founded the Moscow Art Theatre (1898); developed the Stanislavski system (the actor uses emotional memory and psychological identification with the role); the basis of Method Acting in America.
• George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) — Irish-born, wrote in London; combined wit with social and political argument. Pygmalion (1913; basis of My Fair Lady), Major Barbara, Heartbreak House, Arms and the Man, Saint Joan. Nobel Prize in Literature 1925.
• Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) — Irish; comedy of manners, epigrams. The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), An Ideal Husband, Lady Windermere’s Fan; Salomé (written in French) was banned in England.

20th-Century American Drama

• Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953) — first major American dramatist; Nobel Prize 1936. Long Day’s Journey into Night (autobiographical, family addiction and regret; written 1941–42, staged 1956), Mourning Becomes Electra, The Iceman Cometh, Anna Christie.
• Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) — A Streetcar Named Desire (1947, Blanche DuBois vs. Stanley Kowalski), The Glass Menagerie (1944), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955). Lyrical language; Southern Gothic atmosphere; explored desire, memory, and fragility.
• Arthur Miller (1915–2005) — Death of a Salesman (1949; Willy Loman and the American Dream), The Crucible (1953; Salem witch trials as McCarthyism allegory), All My Sons. Married Marilyn Monroe.
• Lillian Hellman (1905–1984) — The Children’s Hour (1934, accusations of lesbianism), The Little Foxes (Southern family greed).
• Lorraine Hansberry (1930–1965) — A Raisin in the Sun (1959), the first Broadway play by a Black woman to win the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award; title from Langston Hughes.
• Edward Albee (1928–2016) — Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962, a couple’s destructive psychological games), The Zoo Story.
• August Wilson (1945–2005) — the Pittsburgh Cycle: ten plays, each set in a different decade of the 20th century, exploring Black American life. Includes Fences (1950s, 1987 Pulitzer), Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson, Two Trains Running, King Hedley II.
• Sam Shepard (1943–2017) — Buried Child (1979 Pulitzer), True West, Curse of the Starving Class; American myth and family dysfunction.
• David Mamet (b. 1947) — Glengarry Glen Ross (1984 Pulitzer; a ruthless real-estate sales office), American Buffalo, Speed-the-Plow; known for profane, staccato dialogue and the ethics of masculine competition.
• Suzan-Lori Parks (b. 1963) — Topdog/Underdog (2002 Pulitzer); experimental historical memory; first Black woman to win the Drama Pulitzer.

20th-Century European Drama

• Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) — Italian; Nobel Prize 1934. Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) collapses the boundary between fiction and reality: six unfinished characters interrupt a rehearsal demanding their story be staged; a founding work of metatheatre. Also wrote Henry IV and Right You Are (If You Think So).
• Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) — Spanish; assassinated at the start of the Spanish Civil War. His “Rural Trilogy”: Blood Wedding (1932; a bride flees with her former lover on her wedding day), Yerma (1934; a woman’s obsession with motherhood), and The House of Bernarda Alba (1936; tyrannical mother imprisons her daughters). Combined folk poetry with surrealist imagery.
• Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) — German; founder of epic theater. The Verfremdungseffekt (alienation/estrangement effect) deliberately breaks theatrical illusion so the audience thinks critically rather than identifying emotionally. Mother Courage and Her Children, The Threepenny Opera (music by Kurt Weill), The Good Person of Szechwan, The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Founded the Berliner Ensemble in East Berlin (1949).
• Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) — Irish, wrote in French and English; central figure of Theatre of the Absurd. Waiting for Godot (1953; two tramps wait for someone who never arrives; existential uncertainty), Endgame, Krapp’s Last Tape. Nobel Prize 1969.
• Eugène Ionesco (1909–1994) — Romanian-French absurdist; The Bald Soprano (1950; clichéd conversation and meaningless language), Rhinoceros (conformity and fascism).
• Jean Genet (1910–1986) — French; The Maids, The Balcony, The Blacks; ritual, transgression, and power.
• Harold Pinter (1930–2008) — British; Pinteresque denotes menace and power beneath mundane dialogue. The Birthday Party, The Homecoming, Betrayal. Nobel Prize 2005.
• Tom Stoppard (b. 1937) — Czech-born British; dazzling wordplay and intellectual conceits. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966; Hamlet’s minor characters center stage), Arcadia, The Real Thing, Travesties.
• Caryl Churchill (b. 1938) — British; Cloud Nine (colonialism and gender), Top Girls, Serious Money; formally experimental.
• Peter Shaffer (1926–2016) — Equus (1973), Amadeus (1979; Salieri’s rivalry with Mozart).

Avant-Garde and Political Theater

• Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) — French actor and theorist; proposed the Theatre of Cruelty (Le Théâtre et son double, 1938): performance should assault the senses and break down the barrier between spectator and event, returning theater to a ritual, incantatory power. Influenced Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski, and experimental theater broadly.
• Theatre of the Absurd — term coined by critic Martin Esslin (1961) to describe plays by Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Adamov, and Pinter that embody absurdist philosophy through dramatic form: illogical action, circular dialogue, the impossibility of communication.
• The Living Theatre — radical American theater company founded by Julian Beck and Judith Malina in New York (1947); pioneered environmental theater and audience participation; The Brig (1963) and Paradise Now (1968).
• Federal Theatre Project (1935–1939) — Depression-era U.S. government program under the WPA; directed by Hallie Flanagan; employed theater workers and produced socially engaged work, including the Living Newspaper format; shut down by Congress over alleged communist influence.
• Jerzy Grotowski (1933–1999) — Polish director; poor theater (stripped of technical apparatus, focused on actor-audience relationship); Towards a Poor Theatre (1968); hugely influential on physical theater training.
• Peter Brook (1925–2022) — British director; The Empty Space (1968) articulated four types of theater: deadly, holy, rough, immediate; directed Mahabharata (1985) and a legendary King Lear with Paul Scofield.

Musical Theater

Origins and Operetta

• Operetta — light opera with spoken dialogue, romantic plots, and tuneful songs; 19th-century precursor to the American musical. Key composers: Jacques Offenbach (Orpheus in the Underworld, La Périchole) in France; Johann Strauss II (Die Fledermaus) in Vienna.
• Gilbert and Sullivan — W. S. Gilbert (librettist) and Arthur Sullivan (composer); produced 14 comic operas for the Savoy Theatre, London. Major works: H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of Penzance (1879), The Mikado (1885).
• The Black Crook (1866) — often cited as the first American musical; a melodrama combined with a French ballet troupe; ran 16 months.

The Golden Age

• Showboat (1927) — music by Jerome Kern, book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; first musical to integrate plot, character, and song around a serious theme (racial prejudice on the Mississippi).
• Rodgers and Hammerstein — Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II; defined the “integrated musical.” Works: Oklahoma! (1943; the first Rodgers & Hammerstein, based on Lynn Riggs), Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951), The Sound of Music (1959).
• Irving Berlin (1888–1989) — composed and wrote Annie Get Your Gun (1946), Holiday Inn, and White Christmas.
• Cole Porter (1891–1964) — Anything Goes (1934), Kiss Me, Kate (1948).
• Frank Loesser (1910–1969) — Guys and Dolls (1950), How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961 Pulitzer).
• West Side Story (1957) — music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (his Broadway lyricist debut), book by Arthur Laurents, choreography by Jerome Robbins; modern Romeo and Juliet in New York gang conflict.
• My Fair Lady (1956) — music by Frederick Loewe, book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner; adapted from Shaw’s Pygmalion.
• Gypsy (1959) — music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by Arthur Laurents; based on the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee.
• Fiddler on the Roof (1964) — music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, book by Joseph Stein; based on Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye stories; choreography by Jerome Robbins. Tevye, a Jewish dairyman in czarist Russia, struggles to reconcile tradition with modernity. “If I Were a Rich Man,” “Sunrise, Sunset,” “Tradition.”
• A Chorus Line (1975) — conceived, directed, and choreographed by Michael Bennett; music by Marvin Hamlisch; backstage audition structure; ran 6,137 Broadway performances.

Stephen Sondheim

• Stephen Sondheim (1930–2021) — the dominant figure of the late-20th-century American musical; combined sophisticated lyrics with complex harmonic scores. Works (as composer-lyricist): A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Company (1970; relationships and marriage), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973; source of “Send in the Clowns”), Pacific Overtures (1976), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sunday in the Park with George (1984, Pulitzer Prize, paintings of Seurat), Into the Woods (1987; fairy-tale deconstruction), Assassins (1990), Passion (1994).

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Contemporary

• Andrew Lloyd Webber (b. 1948) — British; Jesus Christ Superstar (1971, lyrics by Tim Rice), Evita (1978, lyrics by Tim Rice), Cats (1981, based on T. S. Eliot’s poetry), The Phantom of the Opera (1986; longest-running Broadway show until its 2023 closing), Sunset Boulevard (1993).
• Les Misérables (1980/1985) — music by Claude-Michel Schönberg, lyrics by Alain Boublil; originally French; West End adaptation 1985; based on Victor Hugo.
• Hamilton (2015) — written, music, and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda; hip-hop retelling of Alexander Hamilton’s life; 2016 Pulitzer Prize; record 16 Tony nominations.
• Wicked (2003) — music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, book by Winnie Holzman; based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel; a prequel to The Wizard of Oz told from the witches’ perspective; features Elphaba and Glinda; songs include “Defying Gravity” and “Popular”; one of the longest-running and highest-grossing Broadway shows; 2024 film adaptation (Part 1) starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.
• Something Rotten! (2015) — music and lyrics by Wayne Kirkpatrick and Karey Kirkpatrick, book by Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell; a comedic send-up of Shakespeare and the Golden Age musical set in Renaissance England; brothers Nick and Nigel Bottom compete with Shakespeare while a soothsayer foresees the invention of the musical; Tony Award-winning choreography by Casey Nicholaw.
• Rent (1996) — music/book/lyrics by Jonathan Larson; adapted from La Bohème; Pulitzer Prize; Larson died the night before Off-Broadway opening.

Ballet

History and Romantic Ballet

• Ballet de cour — Renaissance court spectacles in France and Italy; the precursor to theatrical ballet; Louis XIV was himself a trained dancer.
• Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687) — Italian-French composer who helped establish the Académie Royale de Danse (1661) under Louis XIV; codified the five positions of the feet.
• Jean-Georges Noverre (1727–1810) — dance theorist; his Lettres sur la danse (1760) argued for expressive, dramatic ballet (ballet d’action) over pure technique spectacle.
• Romantic ballet (c. 1830–1850) — characterized by female dancers en pointe, ethereal subjects, and the idealization of the ballerina. Male dancers became secondary.
• La Sylphide (1832) — choreographed by Filippo Taglioni for his daughter Marie Taglioni; first major Romantic ballet. (A second version by Bournonville, 1836, is in the permanent repertory.)
• Giselle (1841) — music by Adolphe Adam; the quintessential Romantic ballet; a peasant girl dies and becomes a wili (vengeful spirit).
• Marie Taglioni (1804–1884) — defined the Romantic ballerina; famous for her ethereal lightness en pointe.
• Fanny Elssler (1810–1884) — rival of Taglioni; known for earthier, character-based dancing (e.g., the cachucha).

Classical Ballet and Tchaikovsky

• Marius Petipa (1818–1910) — French-born, spent his career at the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg; the dominant choreographer of classical ballet. Staged the definitive versions of the Tchaikovsky ballets.
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) — composed all three of the canonical 19th-century full-length ballets: Swan Lake (1877/1895 revival), The Sleeping Beauty (1890, with Petipa), and The Nutcracker (1892, with Ivanov).
• Swan Lake — Odette (white swan, enchanted princess) and Odile (black swan, sorcerer’s daughter); the dual role is a defining challenge for a ballerina.
• The Sleeping Beauty — based on the Perrault fairy tale; grand classical structure; Petipa’s choreographic masterpiece.
• The Nutcracker — second act in the Kingdom of Sweets; the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier; now the financial backbone of most American ballet companies (performed at Christmas).
• Lev Ivanov (1834–1901) — co-choreographer with Petipa; credited with the “white acts” of Swan Lake and the full staging of The Nutcracker.

Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes

• Sergei Diaghilev (1872–1929) — Russian impresario; founded the Ballets Russes (Paris, 1909); revolutionized ballet by commissioning major artists (Picasso, Matisse, Cocteau) as designers and composers (Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Ravel).
• Vaslav Nijinsky (1889/1890–1950) — principal dancer and choreographer; famous for extraordinary elevation; choreographed L’Après-midi d’un faune (1912, Debussy) and The Rite of Spring (1913, Stravinsky).
• The Rite of Spring (1913) — music by Igor Stravinsky, choreography by Nijinsky; premiere at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées provoked a famous riot; revolutionary irregular rhythms and angular movement.
• Firebird (1910) — Stravinsky’s breakthrough commission for the Ballets Russes; original choreography by Michel Fokine.
• Petrushka (1911) — Stravinsky; choreography by Fokine; a puppet brought to life at a St. Petersburg fair.
• Michel Fokine (1880–1942) — lead choreographer of the early Ballets Russes; reformed ballet toward expressiveness and narrative integration; The Dying Swan (solo for Anna Pavlova), Les Sylphides, Scheherazade.
• Anna Pavlova (1881–1931) — the most famous ballerina of the early 20th century; The Dying Swan (choreographed by Fokine) became her signature.
• Bronislava Nijinska (1891–1972) — Vaslav’s sister; choreographed Les Biches (1924) and Les Noces (1923; Stravinsky) for the Ballets Russes.
• Serge Lifar (1905–1986) — final-phase Ballets Russes principal dancer; later director of the Paris Opéra Ballet.

Balanchine and Neo-Classical Ballet

• George Balanchine (1904–1983) — Georgian-American; apprenticed in the Ballets Russes; co-founded the New York City Ballet (1948) with Lincoln Kirstein. Developed neo-classical ballet: abstract, musicality-driven, plotless; leaner technique with longer lines. Key works: Serenade (1934; first Balanchine work in America), The Four Temperaments (1946), Agon (1957, Stravinsky), Jewels (1967; first full-length abstract ballet).
• Agnes de Mille (1905–1993) — American choreographer; bridged ballet and musical theater. Choreographed Rodeo (1942) for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and the landmark dream ballet in Oklahoma! (1943).
• Frederick Ashton (1904–1988) — foundational choreographer of the Royal Ballet (London); La Fille mal gardée, The Dream, Symphonic Variations.
• Rudolf Nureyev (1938–1993) — Soviet defector (1961); one of the greatest male dancers; long partnership with Margot Fonteyn at the Royal Ballet; later directed the Paris Opéra Ballet.
• Mikhail Baryshnikov (b. 1948) — Soviet defector (1974); technically extraordinary; directed American Ballet Theatre; crossover work in film (The Turning Point, White Nights).

Modern and Contemporary Dance

• Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) — American; rejected ballet’s codified technique in favor of free, expressive movement inspired by ancient Greek art, nature, and emotion; performed barefoot; a founding figure of modern dance.
• Ruth St. Denis (1879–1968) and Ted Shawn (1891–1972) — co-founded the Denishawn School (1915) in Los Angeles; fused Eastern and American dance; trained Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey.
• Martha Graham (1894–1991) — the most influential figure in American modern dance; developed a codified technique built on contraction and release (breath and spinal movement). Founded the Martha Graham Dance Company (1926). Major works: Lamentation (1930), Appalachian Spring (1944, Copland score), Errand into the Maze, Cave of the Heart.
• Doris Humphrey (1895–1958) — contemporaneous with Graham; developed fall and recovery as a movement principle.
• José Limón (1908–1972) — Mexican-American; studied with Humphrey; There is a Time, Missa Brevis; extended the Humphrey technique.
• Merce Cunningham (1919–2009) — rejected narrative and emotional expression; used chance procedures (influenced by John Cage); separated dance from music and set; pioneered digital choreography tools.
• Paul Taylor (1930–2018) — lyrical American modern dance; Aureole (1962), Esplanade (1975).
• Alvin Ailey (1931–1989) — founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (1958); celebrated African American culture and the Black church. Revelations (1960; spirituals and blues) is the most-seen modern dance work in history.
• Twyla Tharp (b. 1941) — blended modern dance, ballet, and popular music; In the Upper Room (1986), choreographed Hair and Movin’ Out (to Billy Joel).
• Loie Fuller (1862–1928) — American pioneer who preceded Duncan; used silk fabrics and colored electric lighting to create abstract visual effects; a bridge between Symbolism and modern dance.
• Pina Bausch (1940–2009) — German choreographer; founder of Tanztheater (dance theater), which fused movement with spoken text, repetition, and emotional confrontation; Café Müller (1978), Kontakthof (1978), Nelken (Carnations) (1982); director of the Wuppertal Tanztheater.
• Kenneth MacMillan (1929–1992) — principal choreographer of the Royal Ballet after Ashton; Romeo and Juliet (1965, with Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev), Manon, Mayerling; brought psychological complexity and dark themes to classical ballet.

• La Bayadère — full-length classical ballet; music by Ludwig Minkus; choreography by Marius Petipa; premiered 1877 at the Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre, St. Petersburg; the story of temple dancer Nikiya, warrior Solor, and the jealous princess Gamzatti; the “Kingdom of the Shades” act (Act III) — in which 32 ballerinas descend a ramp in arabesque — is one of the most celebrated ensembles in classical ballet and is frequently performed as a stand-alone excerpt.

• Flamenco — a performance tradition from the Andalusian region of southern Spain; integrates song (cante), guitar (toque), dance (baile), handclapping (palmas), and finger-snapping (pitos); its roots draw on Romani, Moorish, and Sephardic Jewish musical traditions alongside Andalusian folk forms; the deeply expressive style of song known as cante jondo (“deep song”) is its most demanding form; UNESCO inscribed flamenco as Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2010; major forms (palos) include soleá, seguiriyas, bulerías, and alegrías.

• Bob Fosse (1927–1987) — distinctive jazz-dance style: turned-in knees, rolled shoulders, derby hats, minimal movement. Choreographed and directed Chicago (with Kander and Ebb), Cabaret, Pippin, Dancin’.
• Jerome Robbins (1918–1998) — choreographed both ballet (Fancy Free, 1944; Afternoon of a Faun, 1953) and Broadway (West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof); co-directed NYCB with Balanchine.

Key Terms

• Proscenium — the arch framing the stage opening in a traditional theater; the “picture frame” stage where audience and performance space are separated.
• Thrust stage — a stage that extends into the audience on three sides, as in Elizabethan theaters.
• Arena (theater in the round) — the audience surrounds the stage on all sides.
• Fourth wall — the imaginary boundary between performers and audience; “breaking the fourth wall” is addressing the audience directly.
• Soliloquy — a character speaks private thoughts aloud, alone on stage; a device common in Renaissance drama (covered more fully in British Lit).
• Aside — a brief remark by a character to the audience, unheard by other characters.
• Dramaturgy — the structure and composition of a dramatic work; a dramaturg advises on script, research, and context.
• Blocking — the director’s staging of actors’ movements on stage.
• Mise en scène — the total visual arrangement of a production: sets, lighting, costumes, actors’ positions.
• Method Acting — derived from Stanislavski; actors draw on genuine emotional memory and psychological motivation. The Actors Studio in New York (founded 1947) was a major American center; practitioners include Marlon Brando, Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep.
• Brecht’s Gestus — a specific physical gesture or grouping that expresses a social relationship or attitude, related to the alienation effect.
• Absurdism — in theater, the philosophical idea (drawn from Camus) that human existence is meaningless; plays use illogical, repetitive, or circular action to embody this. Key playwrights: Beckett, Ionesco, Genet.
• Pas de deux — French: “step of two”; a duet in ballet, typically between a principal male and female dancer; in classical form consists of an entrée, adagio, two variations, and a coda.
• Arabesque — a position in ballet in which the dancer stands on one leg with the other extended behind, forming a long line from fingertip to toe.
• Pirouette — a full rotation of the body on one leg; the supporting leg may be in relevé (on pointe or demi-pointe); multiple consecutive pirouettes are a test of technique.
• Plié — a bending of the knees; demi-plié (half-bend) and grand plié (full bend) are foundational; performed in all five positions at the barre.
• Jeté — a jump in which the dancer throws one leg to the side, front, or back; grand jeté is a large split-leap in the air; petit jeté is a small hop.
• Fouetté — a whipping movement; the famous sequence of 32 consecutive fouettés en tournant (whipping turns) in the Black Swan variation of Swan Lake is a signature test of a ballerina’s stamina and control.
• The five positions — the foundational positions of the feet (and arms) in classical ballet, codified in the 17th century; all classical steps begin and end in one of these positions.
• En pointe / sur les pointes — dancing on the tips of the toes in blocked pointe shoes; an exclusively female technique in classical ballet convention.
• Choreography — the art of designing and notating dance sequences.
• Barre — the horizontal handrail used for support during the warm-up portion of a ballet class; “doing barre” refers to the sequence of exercises performed at the start of class.
• Corps de ballet — the ensemble dancers in a ballet company, as opposed to the soloists and principals; in Swan Lake, they form the flock of swans.
• Relevé — rising onto the balls of the feet or onto full pointe; a foundational movement used in turns and as a preparatory position.
• Attitude — a position in which the working leg is raised and bent at the knee, either to the front or back; inspired by the pose in Giovanni Bologna’s statue of Mercury.
• Labanotation — a notation system for recording movement, developed by Rudolf Laban; widely used to preserve choreographic works.
• Tony Awards — the American theater equivalent of the Oscars; awarded annually by the Broadway League and American Theatre Wing for theatrical achievement.
• Obie Awards — Off-Broadway theater awards; often recognize experimental and avant-garde work.
• West End — London’s commercial theater district (analogous to Broadway); major historic venues include Drury Lane and the Haymarket.
• Unities (Aristotelian) — the classical dramatic principles of unity of action (single plot), unity of time (action within one day), and unity of place (single location); Aristotle specified only unity of action, but Renaissance critics codified all three as rules for tragedy.
• Catharsis — Aristotle’s term from the Poetics for the emotional purging of pity and fear experienced by the audience at the end of tragedy; one of the most debated concepts in all of dramatic theory.
• Hamartia — the fatal flaw or error in judgment of a tragic hero (Aristotle); often translated as “mistake” or “flaw”; Oedipus’s hamartia is typically identified as hubris.
• Anagnorisis — Aristotle’s term for the moment of recognition or discovery by the protagonist; in Oedipus Rex, the moment Oedipus discovers his true identity.
• Peripeteia — Aristotle’s term for the reversal of fortune in tragedy, often occurring simultaneously with anagnorisis.
• Hubris — excessive pride or confidence in Greek tragedy; typically the force that triggers the protagonist’s downfall.