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An actor (masculine/gender-neutral), or actress (feminine), is a person who portrays a character in a production."The dramatic world can be extended to include the 'author', the 'audience' and even the 'theatre'; but these remain 'possible' surrogates, not the 'actual' referents as such" (Elam 1980, 110). The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), literally "one who answers". Hypokrites (related to our word for Hypocrisy) also means, less often, "to answer" the Tragedy Greek chorus. See Weimann (1978, 2); see also Csapo and Slater, who offer translations of classical source material using the term hypocrisis (acting) (1994, 257, 265–267). The actor's interpretation of a rolethe art of acting pertains to the role played, whether based on a real person or fictional character. This can also be considered an "actor's role", which was called this due to scrolls being used in the theaters. Interpretation occurs even when the actor is "playing themselves", as in some forms of experimental performance art.
Formerly, in ancient Greece and the Middle Ages, and in England at the time of William Shakespeare, only men could become actors, and women's roles were generally played by men or boys. While Ancient Rome did allow female stage performers, only a small minority of them were given speaking parts. The commedia dell'arte of Italy, however, allowed professional women to perform early on; Lucrezia Di Siena, whose name is on a contract of actors from 10 October 1564, has been referred to as the first Italian actress known by name, with Vincenza Armani and Barbara Flaminia as the first primadonnas and the first well-documented actresses in Italy (and in Europe).Giacomo Oreglia (2002). Commedia dell'arte. Ordfront. After the English Restoration of 1660, women began to appear onstage in England. In modern times, particularly in pantomime and some operas, women occasionally play the roles of boys or young men.
The profession of acting possesses a significant amount of terminology, some of which is historically or contemporaneously contentious. This includes the term actress and less common player.
Seventeenth-century English writers sometimes used the forms "actoress" or "actoresse" to refer to a female appearing on stage.
In the 19th century, many people viewed women in acting negatively, as actresses were often courtesans; females on stage had become associated with promiscuity. Despite such prejudices, the 19th century also saw early female stage "stars", most notably Sarah Bernhardt.'Studies in hysteria': actress and courtesan, Sarah Bernhardt and Mrs Patrick Campbell
After 1660, when women first started to appear on stage regularly in England, the terms actor or actress initially applied interchangeably to female performers, but later, influenced by the French , actress became the common term for women in theater and film. The etymology derives from actor with added. When referring to groups of performers of both sexes, actors is preferred.
Within the acting profession, the re-adoption of "actor" as a gender-neutral term dates to the post-war period of the 1950s and '60s, when the contributions of women to cultural life in general came under scrutiny. When The Observer and The Guardian published their new joint style-guide in 2010, it stated "Use 'actor' for both male and female actors; do not use actress except when in name of award, e.g. Oscar for best actress". The guide's authors stated that "actress comes into the same category as authoress, comedienne, manageress, 'lady doctor', 'male nurse' and similar obsolete terms that date from a time when professions were largely the preserve of one sex (usually men)." (See male as norm.) Whoopi Goldberg stated: "An actress can only play a woman. I'm an actor – I can play anything." Wikiquote traces this statement to an interview on The Today Show on 13 January 1986. The UK performers' trade-union Equity has no policy on the use of "actor" or "actress". An Equity spokesperson said that the union does not believe that there is a consensus on the matter and stated that the "... subject divides the profession". In 2009, the Los Angeles Times stated that "Actress" remains the common term used in major acting awards given to female recipients (e.g., Academy Award for Best Actress).
In the Early Middle Ages, churches in Europe began staging dramatized versions of biblical events. By the middle of the 11th century, liturgical drama had spread from Russia to Scandinavia to Italy. The Feast of Fools encouraged the development of comedy. In the Late Middle Ages, plays were produced in 127 towns. These vernacular Mystery plays often contained comedy, with actors playing , , and .Brockett and Hildy (2003, 86) The majority of actors in these plays were drawn from the local population. Amateur performers in England were exclusively male, but other countries had female performers.
There were several secular plays staged in the Middle Ages, the earliest of which is The Play of the Greenwood by Adam de la Halle in 1276. It contains satirical scenes and Folk culture material such as faeries and other supernatural occurrences. also rose in popularity after the 13th century. At the end of the Late Middle Ages, professional actors began to appear in England and Europe. Richard III and Henry VII both maintained small companies of professional actors. Beginning in the mid-16th century, Commedia dell'arte troupes performed lively improvisational playlets across Europe for centuries. Commedia dell'arte was an actor-centred theatre, requiring little scenery and very few props. Plays were loose frameworks that provided situations, complications, and the outcome of the action, around which the actors improvised. The plays used . A troupe typically consisted of 13 to 14 members. Most actors were paid a share of the play's profits roughly equivalent to the sizes of their roles.
The development of the theatre and opportunities for acting ceased when Puritan opposition to the stage banned the performance of all plays within London. Puritans viewed the theatre as immoral. The re-opening of the theatres in 1660 signalled a renaissance of English drama. English comedies written and performed in the Restoration period from 1660 to 1710 are collectively called "Restoration comedy". Restoration comedy is notorious for its sexual explicitness. At this point, women were allowed for the first time to appear on the English stage, exclusively in female roles. This period saw the introduction of the first professional actresses and the rise of the first celebrity actors.
Occasionally, the issue can be complicated, for example, by a woman playing a woman acting as a man—who then pretends to be a woman, such as Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria, or Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love. In , film-watchers never learn the gender of the androgynous main characters Pat and Chris (played by Julia Sweeney and Dave Foley). Similarly, in The Marriage of Figaro, there is a scene in which Cherubino (a male character portrayed by a woman) dresses up and acts like a woman; the other characters in the scene are aware of a single level of gender role obfuscation, while the audience is aware of two levels.
Women playing male roles are uncommon in film, with notable exceptions. In 1982, Stina Ekblad played the mysterious Ismael Retzinsky in Fanny and Alexander, and Linda Hunt received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously. In 2007, Cate Blanchett was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Jude Quinn, a fictionalized representation of Bob Dylan in the 1960s, in I'm Not There.
A few modern roles are played by a member of the opposite sex to emphasize the gender fluidity of the role. Edna Turnblad in Hairspray was played by Divine in the 1988 original film, Harvey Fierstein in the Broadway musical, and John Travolta in the 2007 movie musical. Eddie Redmayne was nominated for an Academy Award for playing Lili Elbe (a trans woman) in 2015's The Danish Girl.Andrea Mandell, Can Eddie Redmayne nab Oscar No. 2?, 20 December 2015, USA Today
As non-binary and transgender characters have become more commonplace in media, including film, it has become more common for cisgender actors to play those characters, such as Hilary Swank starring as Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry. Conversely, transgender actors may play cross-gender roles, especially before public transition, such as Elliot Page playing as Shawna Hawkins in the Tales of the City miniseries.
In ancient Greece and ancient Rome and the Middle Ages, it was considered disgraceful for a woman to go on stage. Nevertheless, women did perform in Ancient Rome, and again entered the stage in the Commedia dell'arte in Italy in the 16th century; in 1562, Lucrezia Di Siena became the perhaps first professional actress since Ancient Rome. France and Spain also had female actors in the 16th century. In William Shakespeare's England, however, women's roles were generally played by men or boys.
In contrast to Ancient Greek theatre, Ancient Roman theatre did allow female performers. While the majority of them were seldom employed in speaking roles but rather for dancing, there was a minority of actresses in Rome employed in speaking roles, and also those who achieved wealth, fame and recognition for their art, such as Eucharis, Dionysia, Galeria Copiola and Fabia Arete, and they also formed their own acting guild, the Sociae Mimae, which was evidently quite wealthy.Pat Easterling, Edith Hall: Greek and Roman Actors: Aspects of an Ancient ProfessionGreek and Roman Actors: Aspects of an Ancient Profession. (2002). Kiribati: Cambridge University Press. p. 294 The profession of acting seemingly died out in late antiquity.
The actors performing in the medieval theatre genres were normally not professional actors. Rather, they were amateurs who were temporarily engaged to perform a role in a production staged on a temporary basis during some sort of festivity.
The amateurs engaged to perform in religious plays were typically drawn from their sponsoring church congregations, and the common thing was to engage men to perform also the female parts.Katritzky, M. (2017). Women, Medicine and Theatre 1500–1750: Literary Mountebanks and Performing Quacks. Storbritannien: Taylor & Francis. However, women were not explicitly banned, and there were cases in which women were appointed to play. In 1514, for example, women were engaged to perform all the female roles in the Bozen Passion Play in the city of Bolzano.
The first professional company of actors since antiquity in which the names of the members are known by name are from Padova in 1545; the name of the actors of that company were all men, and since no name of any professional actress is known prior to Lucrezia, it has been assumed that there were no actresses before.Barasch, Frances K. "Italian Actresses in Shakespeare's World: Flaminia and Vincenza". Shakespeare Bulletin, vol. 18, no. 4, 2000, pp. 17–21. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26355889. Accessed 6 Aug. 2025. During the entry of king Henri II and Catherine de Medici to Lyon in 1548, the tragicomedy La Calandria by Bernardo Dovizi was performed by both male and female actors from Italy, of which Brantome noted that it was "very well performed by the actors and actresses, who were very beauiful, spoke very well, and were extremely graceful". However, it is not known if the Italian actors that performed this play were professional actors, or if they were people temporary engaged to participate in the festivities by staging a play, which would not have been uncommon for women during this time period. A letter from Mantova in 1562 mention an unnamed actress from Rome performing with "Moorish dances". Lucrezia Di Siena, whose name is on an acting contract in Rome from 10 October 1564, has been referred to as the first Italian actress known by name, with Vincenza Armani and Barbara Flaminia as the first Prima donna and the first well-documented actresses in Italy (and Europe). From the 1560s onward, actresses became the norm in Italian theaters, and when Italian theater companies toured abroad, Italian actresses became the first women actors performing in many countries.
Women also started to appear on stage outside of Italy during the 16th century. During the Spanish Golden Age theatre (1590–1641), women performed on stage from the very beginning. Ana Muñoz toured and performed in the theater company of actor-manager Antonio de Villegas after their marriage in 1589, and took over the company herself after his death;Prieto, Andrés (2001). Teoría del arte dramático (in Spanish). Editorial Fundamentos. ISBN 978-84-245-0888-3. Jerónima de Burgos performed with her husband in the theater company of Alonso de Cisneros and Jerónimo Velázquez, touring Portugal as well as Spain during the 1590s;"Jerónima de Burgos". Real academia de la historia. Läst 12 januari 2020. and Micaela de Luján (c. 1570–1614) became the role model for Carmila Lucinda by Lope de Vega;Huerta, Javier; Peral, Emilio; Urzaiz, Héctor (2005). Teatro español de la A a la Z. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. pp. 426–7. all of them worked as actresses during the 1590s.
In France, women appear to have performed in the travelling theater companies early on during the 16th century, though the exact time the first actress appeared is hard to determine. Prior to the establishment of the first permanent theatre in Paris, the actors of the travelling theatre companies are not well documented regardless of their sex. While professional French actresses were reportedly active in France in the second half of the 16th century, they are seldom mentioned by name and then normally only very briefly. Nine contemporary actresses beside Marie Vernier are briefly mentioned: Jeanne Crevé, Judith Le Messier, Elisabeth Diye, Mlle Dufresne, Isabelle Paquette Le Gendre, Francoise Petit, Marguerite Dugoy, Renée Berenger and Rachel Trepeau, but only Marie Vernier and Rachel Trepeau are documented to any large degree. Marie Vernier, known also as Mlle La Porte, was the leading lady and co-director of Valleran-Lecomte's theatre company, which performed in Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris and toured the country and the Spanish Netherlands from a least 1604 onward.
This also created new attitudes to the issue of women performing on stage, since every country now formed their own opinions in the issue. The outcome was that women actors started to appear one by one in each country; sometimes after a law reform explicitly allowing them to act, and sometimes simply as a matter of slow informal development, when individual theater managers started to employ women. This appeared in different times in different countries. In some countries that had native actors, like the Holy Roman Empire and The Netherlands, this happened earlier. In some countries, like the Nordic countries, Poland and Russia, this happened later, simply because they did not have a native theater with native actors until relatively late in time.
In Germany and the Netherlands, women started to perform in the native travelling theatre companies in the mid-17th century. The first actresses were normally the wives and daughters of the theater managers, and their presence were accepted since they performed in a family company under supervision of a father or husband. Initially they were not allowed to perform in the permanent city theatres, but soon they made their debut there as well. On April 19, 1655, Ariana Nozeman made her debut at the stage of the Schouwberg of Van Kampen in Amsterdam in a play by Jan Jacobsz. Schipper which bore her name 'Onvergelijkelijke Ariana' ('Incomparable Ariana'), and thus became the first woman to play a leading role in a public play in The Dutch Republic.
The debut of women on stage in Germany appear to have taken place the same year. In September 1655, "female players" are noted to have been performed in Frankfurt for the first time.The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Women on Stage. (2020). Tyskland: Springer International Publishing. p. 183 Under Johannes Velten and his father-in-law Carl Andreas Paulsen, the first actresses were employed in Germany. Velthens wife Catharina Elisabeth Velten acted with her mother and sister on stage in first in her father's and then in her husband's theater, the Hochdeutsche Hofcomödianten, and after her husband's death, she managed his theater and continued his policy of employing women.Historical Dictionary of German Theater. (n.d.). (n.p.): (n.p.). p. 3-4
England was late in introducing women on the stage compared to the rest of Western Europe. In the first half of the 17th century, women were still not allowed on the English stage. The English audience were first introduced to female actors by visiting foreign theatre companies. The perhaps first actress to perform in England was the Italian actress Angelica Martinelli,Duffin, R. W. (2018). Some Other Note: The Lost Songs of English Renaissance Comedy. USA: Oxford University Press. p. 193 a member of a visiting Italian Commedia dell'arte company, who performed in England as early as 1578.M.A. Katritzky: Women, Medicine and Theatre 1500–1750: Literary Mountebanks and Performing The rare occurrence of foreign actresses during visits by foreign theatre companies, however, did not result in an English reform, and there were no professional native English actresses. In November 1629, a French theatre company was allowed to make a guest appearance at the Blackfriars Theatre in London, during which the actresses were "hissed, booed and pippin - pelted from the stage".The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Women on Stage. (2020). Tyskland: Springer International Publishing. p.182 When an eighteen-year Puritan prohibition of drama was lifted after the English Restoration of 1660, women began to appear on stage in England. Margaret Hughes is often credited as the first professional actress on the English stage. The prohibition against female actors ended during the reign of Charles II in part because he enjoyed watching actresses on stage. Specifically, Charles II issued letters patent to Thomas Killigrew and William Davenant, granting them the monopoly right to form two London theatre companies to perform "serious" drama, and the letters patent were reissued in 1662 with revisions allowing actresses to perform for the first time.Fisk, Deborah Payne (2001). "The Restoration Actress". In Owen, Susan J. A companion to restoration drama, pg. 73, (1. publ. ed.). Oxford u.a.: Blackwell. .
In rest of Europe, the debut of women actors came later. However, this was normally not because of a ban on female actors, as had been the case in Western Europe, but rather because of the fact that Northern and Eastern Europe came late in establishing a national theater with professional native actors of their own. In Northern and Eastern Europe, foreign actresses appeared onstage decades before there were any native actors of any gender.
One example of this was Sweden. There was never any ban for women performing on the stage in Sweden, and women appear to have performed on stage as soon as the first foreign theatre companies, that included women members, visited Sweden. In 1653, a Dutch theatre company performed at the royal court of queen Christina; this theatre company included female members - Ariana Nozeman, Elisabeth de Baer and Susanna van Lee who are believed to have been the likely first actresses to perform in Sweden.Gunilla Dahlberg: Komediantteatern i 1600-talets Stockholm (1992) However, Sweden relied on foreign theatre companies for a long time and it took decades after the 1650s until native Swedish actresses appeared. The first national theatre to employ professional native actors, the Kungliga svenska skådeplatsen was inaugurated at the Stora Bollhuset in 1737; it is noted to have employed three female actors from the start, one of whom being Beata Sabina Straas.Byström, Tryggve, Svenska komedien 1737-1754: en studie i Stockholmsteaterns historia, Norstedt, Stockholm, 1981
In Russia, the first theatre was founded in Moscow by the Tsar in 1672. This theatre did employ women actors, but all actors were foreigners (mainly German). The following decades, many foreign theater companies, mainly from Italy, France and Germany, were active in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. However, it was not until the 30th August 1756 Decree of the Imperial Theatres that native Russians were, for the first time, recruited to be educated in acting. The pioneer group of Russian actors consisted of fourteen men - Grigorij Jemeljanov, Pavel Ivanov, Kozma Lukjanov, Fjodor Maksimov, Evstafij Grigorjev, Luka Ivanov, Prokofij Prikaznyj, Fjodor Volkov, Grigorij Volkov, Ivan Dmitrevskij, Aleksej Popov, Gavrila Volkov, Jakov Sjumskij and Michail Tjulkov - and five women; Avdotya Mikhailova, Elizaveta Zorina, Maria Ananyin, Olga Ananyin and Agrafena Musina-Pushkina.Бубнова О. В. От Локателли — к Медоксу, от Медокса — к «Дому Щепкина» Архивная копия от 1 октября 2009 на Wayback Machine // «Наше Наследие»
In Poland-Lithuania, Italian, French and German theatre and opera companies had performed at the royal court since the 16th century. The first public theatre, the National Theatre, Warsaw, was founded in 1765, and the first pioneering group of native Polish actors were employed and trained to perform there. Women were members of this pioneer acting groupe from the start, and Antonina Prusinowska and Wiktoria Leszczyńska is credited as the first two native female actors in Poland.Laurence Senelick: National Theatre in Northern and Eastern Europe, 1746-1900, 1991
In some cases, this did not occur until the 19th century. After the independence of Greece in 1830, a great interest in theatre flourished in Greece. Initially amateur theatre, a professional theatre developed, and the first modern permanent theatre in Athens, the Boukoura Theatre, was founded in 1840. In professional theatre, women's roles were initially played by men or by foreign (Italian) actresses. The first Greek actress being Maria Angeliki Tzivitza, who performed in the Boukoura Theatre on 24 November 1840, and retired after two performances. In September 1842, N. Skoufos, Dimitrios Levidis, Alexandros Rizos Rangavis and Grigoris Kampouroglou founded the Athenian Theatre Committee or Society of Theatre with the intent to educate professional Greek actors in Athens. Male actors were swiftly hired, but it was difficult to find women because the profession was not considered respectable for women. Ekaterina Panayotou signed her contract for the Society of Theatre in Athens on 8 November 1842 and became the first female actor hired, followed by Athena Filipaki, Marigo Defteridi and Marigo Domestini. She has the distinction of being the first professional Greek actress with formal training.Walter Puchner, Andrew White: Greek Theatre between Antiquity and Independence
In China, there were several forms of drama, theater and opera. There were never a full ban on women performing onstage, rather the regulations differed depending on which form of drama was performed on stage. In some forms of Chinese drama such as Beijing opera, men traditionally performed all the roles, including female roles, while in Shaoxing opera women often play all roles, including male ones.Richard Gunde, Culture and Customs of China (2002), page 63.
In India, women as well as male actors performed in the Sanskrit theatre during antiquity. The modern theater was introduced in India as an amateur theatre in the 1850s and became commersial in the 1870s, when the first indigenous Indian actress in modern theater made her debut on stage. Binodini Dasi began her acting career in 1875 at the age of twelve in the Bengali theatre, a domain traditionally dominated by men, and achieved widespread fame for her portrayals of mythological and historical female characters.
In 1870, the modern theater was founded in Egypt with the foundation of the theater company of the theater pioneer Yaqub Sanu. The modern theater art, imported from the Western world, demanded female actors to play female roles. While Yaqub Sanu was able to acquire indigenous male actors, he experienced great difficulty to engage indigenous Egyptian female actors. In this time period, women in Egypt were normally segregated in and veiled in public and it was not accepted for a Muslim woman to engage in acting. Yaqub Sanu was allowed to employ women to act on stage since it was seen as necessary, but he was forced to engage non-Muslim women. He was eventually able to employ two poor Jewish girls: Milia Dayan and her sister. The Dayan sisters are known as the first actresses in the Arab world alongside Miriam Samat, Warda Milan, Mathilde Nagga and the sisters Ibriz Estati and Almaz Estati, all of whom were non-Muslim women. The first Muslim actress did not appear in Egypt and the Arab world until Mounira El Mahdeya in 1915.Rubin, D. (1999). World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre Volume 4: The Arab World. Storbritannien: Routledge.
In the 2000s, women playing men in live theatre is particularly common in presentations of older plays, such as Shakespearean works with large numbers of male characters in roles where gender is inconsequential.
In 2024, the median hourly wage for actors in the United States was $23.33 per hour. Many lack benefits such as health insurance, with only 12.7% of SAG-AFTRA members earning enough income to qualify for its health plan. Full-time actors in Britain earned a median of £22,500 in the same year, slightly less than the minimum wage.
Despite lower median incomes in the profession, some actors earn exceedingly large incomes. Film actors such as Aamir Khan and Sandra Bullock have earned tens of millions of dollars for single film productions.
In the United States, union are paid a daily rate of at least $1,204, although due to their legal status as minors, most or all of the income chiefly goes to the parents or legal guardians. In California, the Coogan Act requires 15% of a child's earnings be placed into a blocked trust account, to be opened when they become a legal adult.Cal. Family Code Illinois, New York, New Mexico, and Louisiana all have similar requirements.
Some theater actors need to learn stage combat, which is simulated fighting on stage. Actors may have to simulate hand-to-hand fighting or sword-fighting. Actors are coached by , who help them learn the choreography of fight actions.
Pioneering film directors in Europe and the United States recognized the different limitations and freedoms of the mediums of stage and screen by the early 1910s. Silent films became less vaudevillian in the mid-1910s, as the differences between stage and screen became apparent. Due to the work of directors such as D W Griffith, cinematography became less stage-like, and the then-revolutionary close-up shot allowed subtle and naturalistic acting. In America, D.W. Griffith's company Biograph Studios, became known for its innovative direction and acting, conducted to suit the cinema rather than the stage. Griffith realized that theatrical acting did not look good on film and required his actors and actresses to go through weeks of film acting training.
Lillian Gish has been called film's "first true actress" for her work in the period, as she pioneered new film performing techniques, recognizing the crucial differences between stage and screen acting. Directors such as Albert Capellani and Maurice Tourneur began to insist on naturalism in their films. By the mid-1920s many American silent films had adopted a more naturalistic acting style, though not all actors and directors accepted naturalistic, low-key acting straight away; as late as 1927, films featuring expressionistic acting styles, such as Metropolis, were still being released.
According to Anton Kaes, a silent film scholar from the University of Wisconsin, American silent cinema began to see a shift in acting techniques between 1913 and 1921, influenced by techniques found in German silent film. This is mainly attributed to the influx of emigrants from the Weimar Republic, "including film directors, producers, cameramen, lighting and stage technicians, as well as actors and actresses".
Unlike theater actors, who develop characters for repeat performances, film actors lack continuity, forcing them to come to all scenes (sometimes shot in reverse of the order in which they ultimately appear) with a fully developed character already.
"Since film captures even the smallest gesture and magnifies it..., cinema demands a less flamboyant and stylized bodily performance from the actor than does the theater." "The performance of emotion is the most difficult aspect of film acting to master: ...the film actor must rely on subtle facial ticks, quivers, and tiny lifts of the eyebrow to create a believable character." Some theatre stars "...have made the theater-to-cinema transition quite successfully (Laurence Olivier, Glenn Close, and Julie Andrews, for instance), others have not..."
Radio drama achieved widespread popularity within a decade of its initial development in the 1920s. By the 1940s, it was a leading international popular entertainment. With the advent of television in the 1950s, however, radio drama lost some of its popularity, and in some countries has never regained large audiences. However, recordings of OTR (old-time radio) survive today in the audio archives of collectors and museums, as well as several online sites such as Internet Archive.
, radio drama has a minimal presence on terrestrial radio in the United States. Much of American radio drama is restricted to rebroadcasts or of programs from previous decades. However, other nations still have thriving traditions of radio drama. In the United Kingdom, for example, the BBC produces and broadcasts hundreds of new radio plays each year on Radio 3, Radio 4, and Radio 4 Extra. Podcasting has also offered the means of creating new radio dramas, in addition to the distribution of vintage programs.
The terms "audio drama"Compare the entry to Hörspiel e.g. in: dict.cc – Deutsch-Englisch-Wörterbuch or "audio theatre" are sometimes used synonymously with "radio drama" with one possible distinction: audio drama or audio theatre may not necessarily be intended specifically for broadcast on radio. Audio drama, whether newly produced or OTR classics, can be found on CDs, , , , and conventional broadcast radio.
Thanks to advances in digital recording and Internet distribution, radio drama is experiencing a revival.
The advent of sound in film
Film actors have to learn to get used to and be comfortable with a camera being in front of them. Film actors need to learn to find and stay on their "mark". This is a position on the floor marked with tape. This position is where the lights and camera focus are optimized. Film actors also need to learn how to prepare well and perform well on-. Screen tests are a filmed audition of part of the script.
In television
"On a television set, there are typically several cameras angled at the set. Actors who are new to on-screen acting can get confused about which camera to look into." TV actors need to learn to use lav mics (Lavaliere microphones). TV actors need to understand the concept of "frame". "The term frame refers to the area that the camera's lens is capturing." Within the acting industry, there are four types of television roles one could land on a show. Each type varies in prominence, frequency of appearance, and pay. The first is known as a series regular—the main actors on the show as part of the permanent cast. Actors in recurring roles are under contract to appear in multiple episodes of a series. A co-star role is a small speaking role that usually only appears in one episode. A guest star is a larger role than a co-star role, and the character is often the central focus of the episode or integral to the plot.
In radio
Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance, broadcast on radio or published on audio media, such as tape or CD. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story: "It is auditory in the physical dimension but equally powerful as a visual force in the psychological dimension."Tim Crook: Radio drama. Theory and practice . London; New York: Routledge, 1999, p. 8.
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