Actor in the context of Prompter (theatre)

In fiction, a character is a person or being in a narrative (such as a novel, play or film). The character may be entirely fictional or based on a real-life person, in which case the distinction of a "fictional" versus "real" character may be made. Derived from the Ancient Greek word χαρακτήρ, the English word dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones by Henry Fielding in 1749. From this, the sense of "a part played by an actor" developed. (Before this development, the term dramatis personae, naturalized in English from Latin and meaning "masks of the drama", encapsulated the notion of characters from the literal aspect of masks.) A character, particularly when enacted by an actor in the theater or cinema, involves "the illusion of being a human person". In literature, characters guide readers through their stories, helping them to understand plots and ponder themes. Since the end of the 18th century, the phrase "in character" has been used to describe an effective impersonation by an actor. Since the 19th century, the art of creating characters, as practiced by actors or writers, has been called characterization.

A character who stands as a representative of a particular class or group of people is known as a type. Types include both stock characters and those that are more fully individualized. The characters in Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler (1891) and August Strindberg's Miss Julie (1888), for example, are representative of specific positions in the social relations of class and gender, such that the conflicts between the characters reveal ideological conflicts.

An artist is a person engaged in creating art, or practicing the arts. The most common usage in everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only.

However, the term is also very widely used in the entertainment business to refer to actors, musicians, singers, dancers , and other performers. The French word artiste is sometimes used in English in this context, although this has become old-fashioned. The use of the term "artist" to describe writers is valid, but less common, and mostly restricted to contexts such as critics' reviews; "author" is generally used instead.

In the performing arts industry such as theatre, film, or television, casting, or a casting call, is a pre-production process for selecting a certain type of actor, dancer, singer, or extra to land the role of a character in a script, screenplay, or teleplay. This process may be used for a motion picture, television program, documentary film, music video, play, or advertisement intended for an audience.

In theatre and performing arts, the stage (sometimes referred to as the deck in stagecraft) is a designated space for the performance of productions. The stage serves as a space for actors or performers and a focal point (the screen in cinema theaters) for the audience. As an architectural feature, the stage may consist of a platform (often raised) or series of platforms. In some cases, these may be temporary or adjustable but in theaters and other buildings devoted to such productions, the stage is often a permanent feature.

There are several types of stages that vary as to the usage and the relation of the audience to them. The most common form found in the West is the proscenium stage. In this type, the audience is located on one side of the stage with the remaining sides hidden and used by the performers and technicians. Thrust stages may be similar to proscenium stages but with a platform or performance area that extends into the audience space so that the audience is located on three sides. In theatre in the round, the audience is located on all four sides of the stage. The fourth type of stage incorporates created and found stages which may be constructed specifically for a performance or may involve a space that is adapted as a stage.

In Renaissance-era London, playing company was the usual term for a company of actors. These companies were organised around a group of ten or so shareholders (or "sharers"), who performed in the plays but were also responsible for management. The sharers employed "hired men" – that is, the minor actors and the workers behind the scenes. The major companies were based at specific theatres in London; the most successful of them, William Shakespeare's company the King's Men, had the open-air Globe Theatre for summer seasons and the enclosed Blackfriars Theatre in the winters. The Admiral's Men occupied the Rose Theatre in the 1590s, and the Fortune Theatre in the early 17th century.

Less fortunate companies spent most of their existences touring the provinces; when Worcester's Men gained official permission to perform in London in 1602, they were, in a manner of speaking, "coming in from the cold" of a life of constant touring.

A monodrama is a theatrical or operatic piece played by a single actor or singer, usually portraying one character.

George Frederick Cooke (17 April 1756 in London – 26 September 1812 in New York City) was an English actor. As famous for his erratic habits as for his acting, he was largely responsible for initiating the romantic style in acting that was later made famous by Edmund Kean.

Acting is an activity in which a story is told by means of its enactment by an actor who adopts a character—in theatre, television, film, radio, or any other medium that makes use of the mimetic mode.

Acting involves a broad range of skills, including a well-developed imagination, emotional facility, physical expressivity, vocal projection, clarity of speech, and the ability to interpret drama. Acting also demands an ability to employ dialects, accents, improvisation, observation and emulation, mime, and stage combat. Many actors train at length in specialist programs or colleges to develop these skills. The vast majority of professional actors have gone through extensive training. Actors and actresses will often have many instructors and teachers for a full range of training involving singing, scene-work, audition techniques, and acting for camera.

A prop, formally known as a (theatrical) property, is an object actors use on stage or screen during a performance or screen production. In practical terms, a prop is considered to be anything movable or portable on a stage or a set, distinct from the actors, scenery, costumes, and electrical equipment. This includes handheld items such as books, cups, weapons, and tools that actors interact with during a performance. Props help to create a realistic setting, convey information, or add to the storytelling by showing details about the characters or the environment.

Stanislavski's system is a systematic approach to training actors that the Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski developed in the first half of the twentieth century. His system cultivates what he calls the "art of experiencing" (with which he contrasts the "art of representation"). It mobilises the actor's conscious thought and will in order to activate other, less-controllable psychological processes—such as emotional experience and subconscious behaviour—sympathetically and indirectly. In rehearsal, the actor searches for inner motives to justify action and the definition of what the character seeks to achieve at any given moment (a "task").

Later, Stanislavski further elaborated what he called 'the System' with a more physically grounded rehearsal process that came to be known as the "Method of Physical Action". Minimising at-the-table discussions, he now encouraged an "active representative", in which the sequence of dramatic situations are improvised. "The best analysis of a play", Stanislavski argued, "is to take action in the given circumstances."

A theatre practitioner is someone who creates theatrical performances and/or produces a theoretical discourse that informs their practical work. A theatre practitioner may be a director, dramatist, actor, designer or a combination of these traditionally separate roles. Theatre practice describes the collective work that various theatre practitioners do.

The term was not ordinarily applied to theatre-makers before the rise of modernism in the theatre. Instead, theatre praxis from Konstantin Stanislavski's development of his system is described through Vsevolod Meyerhold's biomechanics, Antonin Artaud's Theatre of cruelty, Bertolt Brecht's epic, and Jerzy Grotowski's poor theatre. Contemporary theatre practitioners include Augusto Boal with his Theatre of the Oppressed, Dario Fo's popular theatre, Eugenio Barba's theatre anthropology, and Anne Bogart's viewpoints.

Johann Alois Senefelder (born Alois Johann Nepomuk Franz Senefelder; 6 November 1771 – 26 February 1834) was a German actor and playwright who invented the printing technique of lithography in the 1790s.

Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting. Video art can take many forms: recordings that are broadcast; installations viewed in galleries or museums; works either streamed online, or distributed as video tapes, or on DVDs; and performances which may incorporate one or more television sets, video monitors, and projections, displaying live or recorded images and sounds.

Video art is named for the original analog video tape, which was the most commonly used recording technology in much of the form's history into the 1990s. With the advent of digital recording equipment, many artists began to explore digital technology as a new way of expression. Video art does not necessarily rely on the conventions that define theatrical cinema. It may not use actors, may contain no dialogue, and may have no discernible narrative or plot. Video art also differs from cinema subcategories such as avant garde cinema, short films, and experimental film.

"Above-the-line" refers to the list of individuals who guide and influence the creative direction, process, and voice of a given narrative in a film and related expenditures. These roles include but are not limited to the screenwriter, producer, director, and principal cast.

Often, the term is used for matters related to the film's production budget. Above-the-line expenditures reflect the expected line item compensation for an official above-the-line member's role in a given film project. These expenditures are usually set, negotiated, spent and/or promised before principal photography begins. They include rights to secure the material on which the screenplay is based, production rights to the screenplay, compensation for the screenwriter, producer, director, principal actors and other cost-related line items such as assistants for the producers, director or actors.

Giovanni Pastrone, also known by his artistic name Piero Fosco (13 September 1883 – 27 June 1959), was an Italian film pioneer, director, screenwriter, actor and technician.

Pastrone was born in Montechiaro d'Asti. He worked during the era of the silent film and influenced many important directors in the international cinema with Cabiria, such as David Wark Griffith in The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916).

A film director or filmmaker is a person who controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfillment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, production design and all the creative aspects of filmmaking in cooperation with the producer.

The film director gives direction to the cast and crew and creates an overall vision through which a film eventually becomes realized or noticed. Directors need to be able to mediate differences in creative visions and stay within the budget.

Justus D. Barnes (October 2, 1862 – February 6, 1946), named George Barnes in some sources, was an American stage and film actor. He is best known for his role in the 1903 silent short The Great Train Robbery, which the American Film Institute and many film historians and critics recognize as the production that first established both the Western and action genres, setting a new "narrative standard" in the motion picture industry. Kim Newman says it is "probably the first Western film with a storyline".