Theatre: what is theatre?

Definition

Theatre has been a powerful medium of human expression and exploration for thousands of years, offering its community a deeper understanding of itself, both as a collective and as individuals, through a synthesis of entertainment and instruction. Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers, typically actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage.

Meaning Of Theatre

The word comes originally from the Greek Theatron, meaning roughly, ‘ a place to behold. In British English, ‘ theatre’ means a place where live plays are performed.

History Of Theatre

The history of theatre charts the development of theatre over the past 2, 500 years. While performative elements are present in every society, it is customary to acknowledge a distinction between theatre as an art form and entertainment and theatrical or performative elements in other activities.

Ancient Greece

The first people we know created plays were the Ancient Greeks, about the year 500 B. C. They divided plays into two kinds: tragedy and comedy. This division is still used today. The best known Ancient Greek writers of plays are Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes. Some of their plays survived, and are still performed today. The mask was to ‘ melt’ into the face and allow the actor to vanish into the role. Therefore, onlookers did not think about the actor, but thought about the character.

Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church began to use theatre as a way of telling the stories from the Bible to people who did not know how to read. They wrote Mystery Plays, where each part of the Bible story would be a play put on by a different group of people. They wrote miracle plays which were about the lives of the saints. They wrote morality plays which taught the audiences how to live a good Christian life. Twentieth-century theatredescribes a period of great change within the theatrical culture of the 20th century, mainly in Europe and North America.

There was a widespread challenge to long-established rules surrounding theatrical representation; resulting in the development of many new forms of theatre, including modernism, Expressionism, Impressionism, political theatre and other forms of Experimental theatre, as well as the continuing development of already established theatrical forms like naturalism and realism.

Theatre of Pakistan

As an Islamic state, the production of plays and theatrical performances in the past was not condoned in the country for religious reasons that is why this performing art did not have the opportunity to develop and flourish. The concept of Pakistani theater as anational heritage could only be traced back to modern plays due to the absence of any classical theatrical tradition while folk literature has also been largely obscured except the performances of the Bhand.

Urdu theater

The modern theatre in Pakistan, which emerged in 1853, is equated with the Urdu- language theater. It was developed during the period of colonial rule under the British Empire, from the mid-19th century until the mid-20th. The performance of the play Inder Sabha (The Heavenly Court of Indra) written by Agha Hasan Amanat in the court of the last Nawab of Oudh, Wajid Ali Shah in 1855, has been highly regarded as the beginning of Urdu theatre. Today, Pakistan has a growing theatre culture, and Urdu theater competes with English plays for dominance in the country’s entertainment industry. The major competition with theatre is that represented by growing television industry and the spread of films produced in the Pakistani film industry based in Karachi and Lahore, known as “ Lollywood”. Lack of finance is another major obstacle.

Saadat Hasan Manto

Manto is great the most influential Urdu writer of the 20th century. He was one of the most controversial as well. His work is comparable with D. H. Lawrence. This comparison is made because like Lawrence he also wrote about the topics considered social taboos of his Society. He addressed topics ranging from the socio-economic injustice prevailing in pre- and post-colonial South Asia; he stirred up quite a fury when he wrote about controversial topics of love, sex, incest, prostitution and the typical hypocrisy of a traditional South Asian male.

In dealing with these topics, he wasn’t careful to conceal any of the facts and clearly showed the true state of affairs. His short stories were often intricately structured, with vivid satire and a good sense of humor. Manto was a well known film writer of the Indian cinema and was making good money. He however, chose to abandon his lucrative career and migrated to Pakistan. In the seven years that Manto lived in Lahore he continuously struggled for survival. However, he proved to be a productive individual who gave some of his best writings to the literary world regardless of his domestic situation. It was in Lahore that he wrote many of his best known works. Manto was primarily known for his short stories of the South Asia, great literature out of the events relating to the independence of Pakistan in 1947.

My Personel View

Everyone is an actor living in this world. Different people has different character or role to plat towards this society, which showa there personality and identy. We know them from there unique character and world is theatre. we can acting everyday when we meet with different peoples.