The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception. It began after the development of Greek and Roman theatre and before the development of theatre in other parts of Asia.

Yuan drama spread across China and diversified into numerous regional forms, one of the best known of which is Peking Opera which is still popular today. Theatre artist 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. The Mahābhāṣya by Patañjali contains the earliest reference to what may have been the seeds of Sanskrit drama. The theatre of ancient Greece consisted of three types of drama: tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play.The phrase 'no stranger to controversy' may well have been coined for the Scottish comedian, but with comedy often held up as the last bastion. Aristotle's phrase "several kinds being found in separate parts of the play" is a reference to the structural origins of drama. S. Gilbert's and Oscar Wilde's drawing-room comedies; Symbolism; proto- Expressionism in the late works of August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen; [68] and Edwardian musical comedy. Spolin's son, Paul Sills popularized improvisational theatre as a theatrical art form when he founded, as its first director, The Second City in Chicago. Aristotle, Poetics, line 1449a: "Comedy, as we have said, is a representation of inferior people, not indeed in the full sense of the word bad, but the laughable is a species of the base or ugly.

This was in keeping with the old superstition that if left intact, the puppets would come to life at night.

A rental theatre allows the independent companies to seek out the space, while a presenting theatre seeks out the independent companies to support their work by presenting them on their stage. Aristotle defined comedy as a representation of laughable people that involves some kind of blunder or ugliness that does not cause pain or disaster. Most Athenian tragedies dramatise events from Greek mythology, though The Persians—which stages the Persian response to news of their military defeat at the Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE—is the notable exception in the surviving drama.

Through the golden age of variety, the 1980’s refurbishment and up to the present day, the Alhambra Theatre has had a wonderful and varied history. Some are related to political or spiritual ideologies, while others are based purely on "artistic" concerns. In Ancient Greece however, the word drama encompassed all theatrical plays, tragic, comic, or anything in between. g., Random House Webster's College Dictionary (1991); The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition (2006); New Oxford American Dictionary, third edition (2010); Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2011). There were no prohibitions against female performers; companies were all-male, all-female, and of mixed gender.

Because women were allowed on the stage, playwrights had more leeway with plot twists, like women dressing as men, and having narrow escapes from morally sticky situations as forms of comedy. During the dynasty of Empress Ling, shadow puppetry first emerged as a recognized form of theatre in China.

This substitution, he suggests, produces a similar effect: "The 'historic' events evoked by the chorus, recounted by the messenger and interpreted by Darius' ghost are presented on stage in a legendary atmosphere.If not attaining the quality and stature of the fifth-century 'classics', original tragedies nonetheless continued to be written and produced and competed with in large numbers throughout the remaining life of the democracy—and beyond it". These women were regarded as celebrities (also a newer concept, thanks to ideas on individualism that arose in the wake of Renaissance Humanism), but on the other hand, it was still very new and revolutionary that they were on the stage, and some said they were unladylike, and looked down on them. In Indonesia, theatre performances have become an important part of local culture, theatre performances in Indonesia have been developed for thousands of years.