Calhoun County Arts

Theater (American spelling) or theatre (British spelling) is a building, room, or other setting in which theatrical performances or cinematic shows can be presented. Theater is also the art of writing and producing plays. This is the branch of the performing arts concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience using combinations of speech, gesture, music, dance, sound and spectacle -- indeed any one or more elements of the other performing arts. In addition to the standard narrative presentation of dialog and action, theater takes such forms as opera, ballet, pantomime, bunraku, and kabuki.

The history of the theater in Western tradition generally begins with Greek drama. The words "theater" and "theory" both have their origins in the Greek word theatron, "a place for seeing, especially for dramatic presentations," and from theasthai, "to gaze at, contemplate, view as spectators, as in a theater," To theorize, to think about the meaning of life and the state of contemporary culture is thus not far from the means to viewing enactments of it.

Drama is the branch of theater in which speech, either as written or as improvised, is most important.