Theatre Glossary
Whether you're stepping on stage for the first time or picking up a script to read, here's a guide to the terms you'll encounter in the world of theatre.
35 terms in Genres & Styles
Absurdism
A theatrical movement that emerged in the 1950s and 60s, exploring the idea that human existence lacks inherent meaning or purpose. Absurdist plays often feature circular dialogue, illogical situations, and characters trapped in repetitive or meaningless routines. Key playwrights include Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot), Eugène Ionesco (The Bald Soprano), and Harold Pinter.
Genres & StylesAdaptation
The process of transforming a story from one medium into a theatrical production—a novel, film, poem, TV series, or real event reimagined for the stage. Successful adaptations find theatrical equivalents for what works in the source medium rather than simply reproducing it. War Horse adapted a children's novel with puppetry, The Curious Incident used physical theatre, and Hamilton reimagined a biography through hip-hop.
Genres & StylesAgitprop
Theatre created to agitate audiences and propagandise for a political cause—typically left-wing or revolutionary. The term combines "agitation" and "propaganda" and originated in Soviet Russia in the 1920s. Agitprop uses direct, confrontational techniques: placards, chants, exaggerated characters representing social classes, and clear moral messages. While the term can be pejorative, agitprop has influenced political theatre worldwide, from Brecht to modern protest performance.
Genres & StylesCabaret
A form of entertainment featuring music, song, dance, comedy, or drama performed in an intimate venue, typically a restaurant or nightclub with a stage. Cabaret emerged in 1880s Paris and has evolved to include theatrical cabaret shows. The format emphasizes a close relationship between performer and audience, often with direct address and audience interaction.
Genres & StylesComedy
A dramatic genre intended primarily to amuse and entertain, typically ending happily. Comedy encompasses many subgenres including romantic comedy, dark comedy, satire, farce, and comedy of manners. In classical Greek theatre, comedy was one of the two main dramatic forms (alongside tragedy), and the comedic and tragic masks remain iconic symbols of theatre.
Genres & StylesDevised Theatre
Theatre created collaboratively by the ensemble rather than from a pre-existing script. The company develops material through improvisation, research, discussion, and experimentation during the rehearsal process. Companies like Complicité, Forced Entertainment, and Frantic Assembly are known for devised work. The resulting piece may include text, movement, multimedia, and audience interaction.
Genres & StylesDidactic Theatre
Theatre created with the primary intention of teaching, instructing, or conveying a moral or political message to the audience. Didactic theatre prioritises its message over entertainment, though the best didactic work achieves both. Bertolt Brecht's lehrstücke (learning plays) are explicitly didactic, and much Theatre in Education work is didactic by design. The term can be used critically when a play's message overwhelms its artistry.
Genres & StylesDocumentary Theatre
A broad term for theatre based on factual sources—interviews, trial transcripts, government reports, journalism, and other documents. Documentary theatre includes verbatim theatre, tribunal plays (like the Tricycle Theatre's series recreating public inquiries), and investigative pieces. The form has gained prominence as audiences seek theatrical engagement with real-world events and social justice issues.
Genres & StylesEpic Theatre
A theatrical movement pioneered by Bertolt Brecht in the 1920s and 30s that rejects emotional immersion in favour of intellectual engagement. Epic theatre uses techniques like direct audience address, projected text, visible scene changes, episodic structure, songs that comment on the action, and the alienation effect to remind audiences they are watching a constructed performance, encouraging critical thought about social and political issues.
Genres & StylesExpressionism
An early 20th-century theatrical movement that distorts reality to represent subjective emotional experience. Expressionist plays feature exaggerated acting, distorted sets, fragmented dialogue, and symbolic characters (often unnamed, like "The Man" or "The Woman"). Key works include Georg Kaiser's From Morn to Midnight and Sophie Treadwell's Machinal.
Genres & StylesFarce
A comic genre built on exaggerated situations, physical comedy, improbable coincidences, and rapid pacing. Farces typically involve mistaken identities, slamming doors, characters hiding in closets, and escalating chaos. While often dismissed as lowbrow, farce requires precise timing and skilled physical performance. Notable farce writers include Georges Feydeau, Michael Frayn (Noises Off), and Alan Ayckbourn.
Genres & StylesFeminist Theatre
Theatre that foregrounds women's experiences, challenges patriarchal structures, and advocates for gender equality through dramatic storytelling. Feminist theatre emerged as a distinct movement in the 1960s and 70s with companies like Monstrous Regiment and the Women's Theatre Group. Playwrights such as Caryl Churchill, Sarah Kane, and Lynn Nottage have expanded the range of stories told about and by women on stage.
Genres & StylesForum Theatre
An interactive form of theatre developed by Brazilian director Augusto Boal as part of his Theatre of the Oppressed. A scene depicting oppression is performed, then replayed while audience members (called "spect-actors") can stop the action and step in to replace a character, trying different strategies to change the outcome. Forum theatre is used worldwide as a tool for social change, education, and community engagement.
Genres & StylesHistory Play
A dramatic genre that dramatises real historical events and figures, blending fact with theatrical invention. Shakespeare's history plays (the Henry IV/V/VI cycles, Richard II, Richard III) are the most famous examples in English, turning English medieval history into compelling drama. Modern history plays—from Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons to Peter Morgan's The Audience—continue the tradition.
Genres & StylesImmersive Theatre
A form of theatre where the boundary between performer and audience is dissolved—spectators move through the performance space, interact with performers, and experience the story from within rather than watching from seats. Punchdrunk's Sleep No More is perhaps the most famous example. Immersive theatre draws on installation art, site-specific performance, and gaming.
Genres & StylesKitchen Sink Drama
A British theatrical movement of the late 1950s and 60s that brought working-class life, domestic settings, and social realism to the stage, challenging the drawing-room dramas that had dominated the West End. John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1956) is considered the landmark work. The term refers to the unglamorous domestic settings—plays set in bedsits, council flats, and kitchens—that reflected the everyday lives of ordinary people.
Genres & StylesMelodrama
A dramatic genre characterised by exaggerated emotions, clear-cut moral conflicts, sensational plots, and stereotypical characters (virtuous heroes, scheming villains, damsels in distress). Originally, melodrama literally meant "music drama"—music accompanied the action to heighten emotion. Though often used pejoratively today, melodrama was the dominant popular theatre form throughout the 19th century.
Genres & StylesMetatheatre
Theatre that is self-consciously aware of itself as theatre—plays that reference the act of performance, contain plays within plays, or blur the line between fiction and reality. Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (with its play-within-a-play) and Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author are classic examples. Metatheatre invites audiences to think about the nature of storytelling and performance itself.
Genres & StylesNaturalism
A theatrical movement emerging in the late 19th century that pushed realism to its extreme, attempting to present life on stage with scientific accuracy and without moral judgement. Naturalist playwrights like Émile Zola and early Henrik Ibsen depicted the effects of heredity and environment on characters, often focusing on the lives of ordinary or lower-class people.
Genres & StylesOne-Act Play
A play consisting of a single act, performed without an intermission, typically running between 10 minutes and an hour. One-act plays are a distinct dramatic form requiring economy and precision. Festivals of one-act plays are popular in community and educational theatre. Notable one-act playwrights include Anton Chekhov, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee.
Genres & StylesPantomime
A form of theatrical entertainment primarily found in the United Kingdom, traditionally performed during the Christmas season. Pantomimes (or "pantos") are based on fairy tales and feature audience participation, slapstick comedy, songs, cross-dressing roles (the "pantomime dame" played by a man, the principal boy played by a woman), and topical humour. The tradition is distinct from silent mime.
Genres & StylesPhysical Theatre
A broad term for performance styles that prioritise the body as the primary means of storytelling, rather than relying primarily on spoken text. Physical theatre draws on mime, dance, acrobatics, clowning, and other movement traditions. Companies like DV8 Physical Theatre, Gecko, and Frantic Assembly have developed distinctive physical theatre vocabularies.
Genres & StylesPromenade Theatre
A form of performance where the audience moves through different locations following the action, rather than sitting in fixed seats. Similar to immersive theatre but with a more guided, processional structure, promenade performances lead audiences through spaces—indoor or outdoor—where scenes unfold around them. The walking itself becomes part of the theatrical experience.
Genres & StylesQueer Theatre
Theatre that centres LGBTQ+ experiences, identities, and perspectives, both as subject matter and as a creative practice. Queer theatre encompasses a vast range—from pioneering works like The Boys in the Band (1968) and Angels in America (1991) to contemporary explorations of gender, sexuality, and identity. It has been instrumental in challenging heteronormative narratives and creating visibility for LGBTQ+ communities.
Genres & Styles