Compendium

Performing Arts Library — Index

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Performing Arts Library — Index

The live performing arts — theatre, dance, and the sung stage — as performance practice rather than as text or score: their history and traditions, the crafts of the actor, director, designer, and choreographer, and the institutions and economics of the live event. Sister to Music/, VisualArts/, Literature/, and Film/ in the Arts group; the performance counterpart to Literature/drama-and-dramatic-literature (drama as text) and Music/ (music as composition).

  • Status: Tier 1 complete — 9 notes (theatre, acting/directing/design craft, dance ×2, opera & musical theatre, world performance, the arts world), authored 2026-06-03.
  • Conventions: named works, figures, and dates throughout; titles of plays, ballets, operas, and musicals in italic; literal dollar amounts escaped (\$); no emojis.

Tier 1 — Theatre and its craft

TopicFileScope
Theatre history & traditionstheatre-history-and-traditionsGreek → medieval → Elizabethan → modern → contemporary; the staged event
Acting & the actor’s craftacting-and-the-actors-craftStanislavski, the Method, Brecht, physical theatre; voice, body, training
Directing & stagecraftdirecting-and-stagecraftthe birth of the director, the production process, staging, dramaturgy
Scenography & theatre designscenography-and-theatre-designscenic, lighting, costume & sound design; the technical theatre

Tier 1 — Dance

TopicFileScope
Dance history & traditionsdance-history-and-traditionsballet, the Ballets Russes, modern & postmodern dance, social & world dance
Dance technique & choreographydance-technique-and-choreographythe dancer’s instrument, ballet & modern technique, composition, notation

Tier 1 — The sung stage and the wider world

TopicFileScope
Opera & musical theatreopera-and-musical-theatreopera from Monteverdi to Wagner to verismo; the American musical; in performance
World & traditional performanceworld-and-traditional-performanceIndian, Chinese & Japanese classical theatre; ritual, masquerade, puppetry
The performing arts worldthe-performing-arts-worldthe institutions, Baumol’s cost disease, funding, festivals, performance art

Adjacent libraries

  • Music — the score behind opera, musical theatre, and dance; the sister sung/sounding art
  • drama-and-dramatic-literature — drama as written text (this library is its performance counterpart)
  • Film — the recorded performing art; shared craft (acting, directing, design, sound)
  • postwar-and-contemporary-art — performance art and the live/time-based turn in the visual arts
  • cultural-anthropology — ritual, performance studies, and the anthropology of the live event
  • Economics — the economics of the live arts (cost disease, subsidy, the commercial theatre)

9 items under this folder.