What is theatre?

How does theatre relate to the other arts?
It is often called the combination of all the other arts?
How is each of the other arts in theatre?
But theatre uses each of these arts in a unique way.What do we need to create theatre?

Eric Bentley - A performs B for C

Peter Brook - The Empty Space - "I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged"

John Cage - "theatre takes place all the time wherever one is."

Bernard Beckerman -"one or more human beings, isolated in time and/or space, present themselves to another or others..."

Samuel Johnson -"an echo of the public's voice,"

Archer, etc. (editors of an Intro to Theatre text) say that “theatre exists in any consciously artistic attempt to delineate human existence for an audience in a performance presented by living actors to a living audience.”

So - why isn’t a sporting event theatre?
why isn’t a wedding, or church service theatre?

Is it about intention? Whose? Performer or spectator? What about a fight on a street corner? What if it's staged?

 

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