WEEK 3 TASK

Write a short essay of about 400 words on the ‘subject-matter’ stated below:

What is theater? How do you think theater, as a media form, communicates message to 

it’s audience?

Theater 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.         (Source: Wikipedia)

As a media form, theater is much more costly and need more participation than the other media form. The best result would be watching it live rather than watching through the recorded screen since the atmosphere is much more different. The performer of the theater is as much as important than the content of the theater itself. Unlike other medium that is published after it’s had been polished, theater is a one shot performance that had been rehearsed again and again just to perform it right at the particular moment. Theater is a medium form that are much more different than the others, it usually convey the message to the audience indirectly. The audiences need to reflect what they have seen from the performance and what kind of message did the performer trying to tell them.