Is that real blood? What is the nature of reality? When can I have an ice cream?

These are just some of the questions that might occur to you during a night at the theatre.
And so I have compiled a short glossary of theatrical terms, to help you navigate this mysterious experience.

theatre :
/ˈθɪə.tər/

The word theatre comes from the Greek, θέατρο. Meaning - LOOK!

tragedy :
/ˈtrædʒ.ə.di/

Tragedy is by far and away the least funny form of theatre. It was the Ancient Greeks who pioneered this model of unfunny entertainment and now we have to put up with it too.
Tragedy literally means the ‘Song of the Goat’. The theory is that there was a goat in Ancient Greek Theatre who was exceptionally good at singing and everyone loved it and so began a new art form. True to character, humans saw the success of the goat and stole the idea. They started wearing animal masks and singing for themselves, putting the goat out of business. We call this the first tragedy.
Tragedies don’t have any jokes in them but they do teach us useful things, such as:
+ not to have sex with our parents, which can lead to blindness (Oedipus)
+ not to be prudish, which can lead to tearing apart your own children (The Bacchae)
+ not to go to war, which will lead to devastation (The Orestaia)

hamlet :
/ˈhæm.lət/

Hamlet is the most famous tragedy in the world. So what does The Tragedy of Hamlet teach us?
The Tragedy of Hamlet teaches us not to think too much, because Hamlet thinks loads and it gets him absolutely nowhere. Hamlet can be spotted thinking all over the place, for example, next to an open grave. Here he encounters a skull. We soon learn that this skull is the skull of a jester called Yorick. Hamlet observes that the skull has lost its lips, so it can’t tell jokes any more - note here the unfunny nature of tragedy. Hamlet also remembers how the skull used to have lips and how he used to kiss those lips when he was little - ‘I know not how oft’. But Hamlet doesn’t kiss anyone any more. He just thinks about kissing. We call this his ‘tragic flaw’.

tragic flaw :
/ˈtrædʒ.ɪk flɔː/

The special something in someone that could lead to their glory but in fact leads to their devastation.

stage :
/steɪdʒ/

The bit of floor where you ‘play’. Not to be confused with the tragic flaw.

play :
/pleɪ/

noun.
+ (example sentence) ‘I didn’t like the play much because it had no animals in it and it was rather serious and boring.’
verb.
+ (example sentence) ‘Oh thank you yes I’d love to play Hamlet at the National Theatre.’

player :
/pleɪ-er/

noun.
+ (example sentence) ‘Her husband is a bit of a player.’

playwright :
/ˈpleɪ.raɪt/

A person who wrights a play. Not to be confused with the person who writes a play. Wright comes from the Old English ‘wyrhta’, meaning ‘worker’ or ‘maker’. Examples: Ship-wright. Wain-wright. Wheel-wright.

joan plowright :
/ˈdʒəʊn plaʊ.raɪt/

A famous actress.

audience :
/ˈɔː.di.əns/

The audience is the group of people in theatre who watch while other people play. Poor old audience.

realism
/ˈrɪə.lɪ.zəm/

A form of theatre that came about in the mid nineteenth century. Princes like Hamlet were no longer allowed to be protagonists in this kind of theatre. Instead, the hero had to be a mediocre doctor or a bored housewife or a not very good actor with siphilus or something like that.

naturalism
/ˈnætʃ.ər.əl.ɪ.zəm/

Theatre with animals in it.

fourth wall :
/fɔːθ ˈwɔːl/

The fourth wall is an imaginary, invisible wall built between the stage and the auditorium. You have to build a fourth wall if you want to perform naturalism or realism. The audience is supposed to feel like they are looking in on the play through the wall as though the action were a ‘slice of life’ or looking at animals in a zoo, like Mr Darwin.

antonin artaud :
/Αντονέν Αρτό/

Antonin Artaud was a radical French twentieth century theatre artist who didn’t like the fourth wall because he believed it turned the audience into ‘peeping toms’. You might like to think about whether you like to peep, because this will probably affect the kind of theatre you enjoy.

henrik ibsen :
/Χένρικ Ίψεν/

Henrik Ibsen was the most famous ‘realist’ playwright. So if you like peeping, check him out.

immersive theatre :
/ɪˈmɜː.sɪv θέατρο/

Nowadays it is quite fashionable for audiences to wander about right into the middle of the play. Sometimes they get ‘in the way’. When this happens, the actors can either look the audience in the eye like a man, or they can hide behind a sort of flexible fourth wall and pretend that they are in a Henrik Ibsen play, even though the audience is nearly touching their nose.

thumb
/ˈfɪŋ.ɡər/

Thumbs are an important part of the theatrical process. If you perform a stage kiss, you will be required to put your thumb over the lips of the person you kiss. The thumb creates a little wall, built to get in the way of the lips, so it looks like you are kissing but you can actually be doing something else e.g. eating a bean. In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream there is a play within a play in which there is a man playing a wall who stands between Pyramus and Thisbe, stopping them from kissing. In this case, you don’t need a thumb.

empty space :
/ˈemp.ti /

Peter Brook said he could take any empty space and make it into a stage just by getting an actor to walk across it.
Imagine that:

wooden O :
/ˈwʊd.ən O/

In Shakespeare’s Henry V, the Prologue-person refers to the theatre building as a ‘wooden O’ because the new Globe theatre had a round wooden exterior circumference wall.
+ quotation:
Or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques (helmets)
That did afright the air at Agincourt (big battle)?
.
You might argue that the O is also an empty space, but if you do, you should note that the audience is inside this empty space with the actors, which is how they used to do it in the olden days.
Another olden day fact: O, or no-thing (original pronouciation: no-ting) also signified ‘cunt’.

the university of O :
/ˈˈˌjuː.nɪˈvɜː.sə.ti əv O/

A famous English institution of higher education.

curtain :
/ˈkɜː.tən/

+ noun. A curtain goes up to signify when a play begins and it comes down to signify when the play is over.
+ proper noun. ‘The Curtain’ was the name of the second ever theatre built in London (1577) but The Curtain didn’t have a curtain. It was named after the stone ‘curtain wall’ of the city. Thus, there was a Curtain Theatre before there was a Theatre Curtain.

iron curtain :
/aɪənˈkɜː.tən/

The first iron curtain, or ‘iron’, or ‘safety curtain’, was introduced in 1784 in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The Iron Curtain hangs between the stage and the auditorium and it can be brought in swiftly in case of emergency, e.g if someone in the audience wants to run onto the stage and kiss all the players, which is not allowed. An iron curtain is now mandatory for safety reasons.

clapping :
/klæp-ing/

We clap the actors at the end of the play. This began in Roman times. Maybe. We don’t really know. Anyway, in Roman times the audiences clapped and they also clicked their fingers and thumbs and flapped their togas. Anything to make a noise. Clapping went on to become so popular that in France in the 18th century it was common practice for actors to pay people to come and clap them at the end of the show. Which seems to me a funny way round.

NOTE: If you can’t find any actors to clap, you can clap doctors and nurses instead.