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Theatre & Drama · Encyclopedia

Theatre and drama as an applied-and-academic performing-arts discipline at human-root level covers the practice of theatre — as performance art, as literary tradition, as cultural-and-political practice, and as professional career path. The discipline operates institutionally through dedicated drama schools and conservatoires, theatre-studies departments at universities, and the substantial professional-theatre-company-and-production ecosystem. Theatre-studies as an academic field emerged through the early 20th century with the substantial George Pierce Baker tradition at Harvard and Yale, and has expanded to encompass dramatic literature, theatre history, performance studies (the broader interdisciplinary field that emerged through Richard Schechner at NYU in the 1970s), dramaturgy, and applied-theatre-and-community-theatre work.\n\nThe global theatre-education institutional landscape includes both elite drama schools and academic departments. In the UK: the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA, founded 1904, the principal British acting school), the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), the Central School of Speech and Drama (now Royal Central School), the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Guildhall, the East 15 Acting School, plus the academic drama programs at Cambridge, Oxford, Hull, Reading, Royal Holloway, Goldsmiths. In the US: the Juilliard School Drama Division, the Yale School of Drama, the NYU Tisch School of the Arts (with its distinctive multi-conservatoire structure including the Stella Adler Studio, Atlantic Theater Company Acting School, Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, Stonestreet Studios, Meisner Studio, and the Experimental Theatre Wing), the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, the American Conservatory Theater San Francisco, the Goodman School of Drama at DePaul, plus the broader 200+ accredited US theatre programs. In Continental Europe: the Russian theatre-school tradition through GITIS Moscow and the Vakhtangov, the École Jacques Lecoq Paris, the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, the substantial German theatre-academy tradition. In India: the National School of Drama (NSD Delhi, the principal Indian theatre school, founded 1959), Drama School Mumbai, the substantial Indian theatre-festival circuit and theatre-company-and-academy ecosystem.\n\nIndia's theatre-and-drama infrastructure has structural distinctness through the parallel classical-Sanskrit-drama tradition, the regional-language theatre traditions (Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati theatre being particularly strong), and the post-1950s modern-Indian-theatre tradition through Habib Tanvir (Naya Theatre), Ebrahim Alkazi (NSD principal during its formative period), Vijay Tendulkar (Marathi playwright), Badal Sircar (Bengali playwright), Mahesh Dattani (English-language Indian playwright), Girish Karnad (Kannada playwright with substantial English-translation reach). The Sangeet Natak Akademi (the National Academy for Music Dance and Drama) administers theatre-related awards including the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award. The substantial Indian-theatre-festival circuit (the Bharat Rang Mahotsav annual NSD festival, the Prithvi Theatre Festival, Kala Ghoda Arts Festival theatre programme, the Delhi Theatre Festival).\n\nThe applied theatre-and-drama professional practice covers performance-acting careers (the major theatre companies — National Theatre London, Royal Shakespeare Company, the Public Theater New York, Steppenwolf Chicago, the Old Vic, the Royal Court, plus the substantial Off-Broadway and Off-West-End and London Fringe ecosystems), directing, dramaturgy, theatre-design (set, costume, lighting, sound), playwriting, theatre education at all levels, applied-theatre and community-theatre work (with the substantial Theatre of the Oppressed tradition through Augusto Boal's methodology), arts administration and theatre-company management, theatre criticism and journalism, and the substantial theatre-and-television-and-film crossover that has expanded through the streaming-era. The structurally-precarious theatre-employment economics in most major jurisdictions remains a longstanding career-pathway challenge.\n\nFor a globally-mobile theatre professional, credentials are moderately portable. The major drama-school graduates from RADA, Juilliard, NSD have substantial cross-border-recognition.\n\nCross-references: theatre intersects with academy-arts-design, human-root-dance (the performing-arts overlap), neglect-root-music (musical-theatre overlap), the lifestyle-culture vertical, and the broader entertainment-industry ecosystem.