Definition of "theater" []

• A building, room, or outdoor structure for the presentation of plays, films, or other dramatic performances. (noun)
• A room with tiers of seats used for lectures or demonstrations: an operating theater at a medical school. (noun)
• Dramatic literature or its performance; drama: the theater of Shakespeare and Marlowe. (noun)
• The milieu of actors and playwrights. (noun)
• The quality or effectiveness of a theatrical production: good theater; awful theater. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Classically, the term theater refers to actors performing on a stage in the physical presence of their viewers."
• "In college at Northwestern from 1998 to 2003, he was less interested in the traditional theater scene than in exploring Chicago, discovering what he calls the "theater of the streets.""
• "An audience in the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre never comes to any fuller comprehension of what a life in the theater is all about."