Theater company
A theater company (also theater company , theater ensemble ) is a tightly knit group of actors , mostly at a theater , who regularly puts on previously rehearsed plays . As is customary in theater, a distinction can be made between seasonal performances and repertoire pieces.
Word origin and usage
The word comes from the company medieval Latin compagn (i) a and was since the 14th century, originally used as a word for a bread cooperative (in the singular: Companio "bread comrade", see also partner ). The French spelling Compagnie was also used earlier in the commercial language for a company run by a company or a cooperative. In English you can still find this usage with the word Company. In the theater, this artistic and economic association of actors is often used as a proper name, for example at the Theater Kompagnie Stuttgart , Theater Compagnie Lion ( Saarbrücken ), Markus Zohner Theater Compagnie or the Leipzig Theater Company ("theaterkompanie.leipzig"). In Belgium, France, the Netherlands, France and China, too, the company can be found in the proper names of theater ensembles. For example in Compagnie Transe Express Circus , Compagnie Renaud-Barrault or National Theater Company of China .
The term in English-speaking theater
In the English theater in the times of Elizabeth I and Jacob I up to the closure of the London theaters , i.e. between approx. 1560 and 1642, theater ensembles employed or commercial traveling theater companies were referred to as playing companies . Where their proper names were the title or name of their respective patron. A patronage by a nobleman was necessary to have changed as the Elizabethan poor laws with a law of the 1,572th This changed the situation of traveling actors: Those who did not have patronage from a nobleman could be classified as a vagabond and subject to a number of penalties. In contrast, those who sought such protection were legally safer than before. The various playing companies of the Elizabethan Theater were called Leicester's Men , Lord Strange's Men , Queen Elizabeth's Men or Admiral's Men from then on . The Lord Chamberlain's Men , William Shakespeare 's company , were outstanding .
In the Stuart Restoration after 1660, the concept of the company also appears in the names of the newly founded theater troupes, such as Duke's Company or King's Company . Even today theater ensembles in English-speaking countries use the term for themselves, such as the Steppenwolf Theater Company or the Royal Shakespeare Company .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Company . In: Former Academy of Sciences of the GDR, Heidelberg Academy of Sciences (Hrsg.): German legal dictionary . tape 7 , issue 8 (edited by Günther Dickel , Heino Speer, with the assistance of Renate Ahlheim, Richard Schröder, Christina Kimmel, Hans Blesken). Hermann Böhlaus successor, Weimar 1981, OCLC 832567114 ( adw.uni-heidelberg.de ).
- ^ Website of the Leipzig Theater Company