Week Three// What Is Theatre?

Task 1: Write a short essay of about 400 words on the 'subject-matter' below stated. What is theatre? How do you think theatre, as a media form, communicates messages to its audience?

Based on Wikipedia, 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. The specific place of the performance is also named by the word "theatre" as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, “a place for viewing”) and θεάομαι (theáomai, “to see", "to watch", "to observe”). 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 today includes performances of plays and musicals. Although it can be defined broadly to include opera and ballet, those art forms are outside the scope of this article. 

Theatre is a type of media form which can bring messages to the audience. There is more effective if we use theatre as a media form because it just like a story telling for people to recall the facts or the story. The writer has to be creative and think of ways to set an emotion into each character which can be felt by the audience such as comedy, romance, mystery and so on. Besides, they need to think on the type of audience would be aiming at and have to keep in mind of their target audience. According to Wikipedia once again, theatre has involves the audiences in variety of ways. Audiences have been engaged differently, often as active participants in the action on a highly practical level. Audience participation can range from asking for volunteers to go onstage. By using audience participation, the performer invites the audience to feel a certain way and by doing so they may change their attitudes, values and beliefs in regard to the performance's topic.

Reference: Wikipedia