Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A theatrical, showy, or stagy action or thing.
  • noun The state or character of being theatrical; theatrical appearance; histrionism.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun theatrical behaviour and mannerisms

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an artificial and mannered quality

Etymologies

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Examples

  • As with most of these play, a great deal of the theatricality is outside of the words and “story.”

    24 | January | 2008 | Living the Liminal 2008

  • As with most of these play, a great deal of the theatricality is outside of the words and “story.”

    January | 2008 | Living the Liminal 2008

  • As with most of these play, a great deal of the theatricality is outside of the words and “story.”

    Two New 10 Minute Plays | Living the Liminal 2008

  • "real life" roles and the blurring, semi-transparent quality of lace, Marie Antoinette's theatricality is crucial for connecting her sartorial reign to the

    Framing Romantic Dress: Mary Robinson, Princess Caroline and the Sex/Text 2006

  • “Moves,” famous for being danced in silence, isn’t really so much a ballet as a series of sketches, and some of its repeated and outstretched splayed-hand gestures look phony, but Robbins’s theatricality is such that it still commands the attention of the general audience better than any other dance I have ever known performed without aural accompaniment.

    Ballet in London: A Home Company on Tour - ArtsBeat Blog - NYTimes.com 2008

  • “Moves,” famous for being danced in silence, isn’t really so much a ballet as a series of sketches, and some of its repeated and outstretched splayed-hand gestures look phony, but Robbins’s theatricality is such that it still commands the attention of the general audience better than any other dance I have ever known performed without aural accompaniment.

    Ballet in London: A Home Company on Tour - ArtsBeat Blog - NYTimes.com 2008

  • Art historian Michael Fried, using the terms "theatricality" and "absorption," distinguishes between figures who seem to break out from a picture to engage with us, and those so deeply contained in thought or action that we impose ourselves upon them.

    A Pathbreaker, Imitated Yet Unsurpassed Willard Spiegelman 2011

  • And yet, like Moon, they also have something stylised, unearthly and unreal about them: a kind of theatricality which isn't too bad.

    The Guardian World News 2010

  • Adding to the theatricality was the arrival of Kold-Draft ice machines, which become de rigueur at the top cocktail caves.

    msnbc.com: Top msnbc.com headlines 2010

  • Morrell and David Finn, which fashionably evokes in an abstract manner the ravages of a modern eastern European war zone and makes play with the idea of theatricality Venus is a prima donna, who performs on a stage within a stage.

    Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph 2010

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