Theatre practitioner is a modern term to describe someone who both creates theatrical

Theatre

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...

 performance

Performance

A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people, the audience. Choral music and ballet are examples. Usually the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand. Afterwards audience...

s and who produces a theoretical

Theory

The English word theory was derived from a technical term in Ancient Greek philosophy. The word theoria, , meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", and referring to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action...

 discourse

Discourse

Discourse generally refers to "written or spoken communication". The following are three more specific definitions:...

 that informs his or her practical work. A theatre practitioner may be a director, a dramatist, an actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

, or—characteristically—often a combination of these traditionally-separate roles. "Theatre practice" describes the collective work that various theatre practitioners do.

The term is not ordinarily applied to theatre-makers prior to the rise of modernism

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

 in the theatre, instead describing theatre praxis from Stanislavski's development of his 'system', through Meyerhold

Vsevolod Meyerhold

Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold was a great Russian and Soviet theatre director, actor and theatrical producer. His provocative experiments dealing with physical being and symbolism in an unconventional theatre setting made him one of the seminal forces in modern international theatre.-Early...

's biomechanics

Biomechanics (Meyerhold)

Biomechanics was a system of actor training developed by Vsevolod Meyerhold. Its purpose was to widen the emotional potential of a theater piece and express thoughts and ideas that could not be easily presented through the naturalistic theater of the period....

, Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...

's epic

Epic theatre

Epic theatre was a theatrical movement arising in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners, including Erwin Piscator, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vsevolod Meyerhold and, most famously, Bertolt Brecht...

 and Jerzy Grotowski

Jerzy Grotowski

Jerzy Grotowski was a Polish theatre director and innovator of experimental theatre, the "theatre laboratory" and "poor theatre" concepts....

's poor theatre, down to the present day, with contemporary theatre practitioners including Augusto Boal

Augusto Boal

Augusto Boal was a Brazilian theatre director, writer and politician. He was the founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, a theatrical form originally used in radical popular education movements...

 with his Theatre of the Oppressed

Theatre of the Oppressed

The Theatre of the Oppressed describes a range of theatrical forms that the Brazilian theatre practitioner Augusto Boal first elaborated in the 1960s, initially in Brazil and later in Europe. Boal was influenced by the work of the educator and theorist Paulo Freire. Boal's techniques use theatre as...

, Dario Fo

Dario Fo

Dario Fo is an Italian satirist, playwright, theater director, actor and composer. His dramatic work employs comedic methods of the ancient Italian commedia dell'arte, a theatrical style popular with the working classes. He currently owns and operates a theatre company with his wife, actress...

's popular theatre, Eugenio Barba

Eugenio Barba

Eugenio Barba is an Italian author and theatre director based in Denmark. He is the founder of the Odin Theatre and the International School of Theatre Anthropology, both located in Holstebro, Denmark.-Biography:...

's theatre anthropology and Anne Bogart

Anne Bogart

-Biography:She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Bard College in 1974, followed by a Master of Arts degree from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1977. She served as Artistic Director of the Trinity Repertory Company for its 1989-90 season...

's viewpoints

Viewpoints

Viewpoints is a technique of composition that provides a vocabulary for thinking about and acting upon movement and gesture. Originally developed in the 1970s by choreographer Mary Overlie as a method of movement improvisation, The Viewpoints theory was adapted for stage acting by directors Anne...

.

Sources

• Counsell, Colin. 1996. Signs of Performance: An Introduction to Twentieth-Century Theatre. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0415106436.
• McCullough, Christopher, ed. 1998. Theatre Praxis: Teaching Drama Through Practice. New Directions in Theatre Ser. London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-0333649961. New York: St Martin's P. ISBN 978-0312216115.
• ---. 1996. Theatre and Europe (1957-1996). Intellect European Studies ser. Exeter: Intellect. ISBN 978-1871516821.
• Milling, Jane, and Graham Ley. 2001. Modern Theories of Performance: From Stanislavski to Boal. Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave. ISBN 978-0333775424.
• Pavis, Patrice. 1998. Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts, and Analysis. Trans. Christine Shantz. Toronto and Buffalo: U of Toronto P. ISBN 978-0802081636.