Elizabethan England

During the Elizabethan era in England, theaters were constructed of wooden framing, infilled with wattle and daub and roofed with thatch. They consisted of several floors of covered galleries surrounding a courtyard which was open to the elements. A large portion of the audience would stand in the yard, directly in front of the stage. This layout is said to derive from the practice of holding plays in the yard of an inn. Archaeological excavations of The Rose theater at London's Bankside, built 1587, have shown that it had en external diameter of 72 feet (22 metres). The nearby Globe Theatre (1599) was larger, at 100 feet (30 metres). Other evidence for the round shape is a line in Shakespeare's Henry V which calls the building "this wooden O", and several rough woodcut illustrations of the city of London.

Around this time, the green room, a place for actors to wait until required on stage, became common terminology in English theaters.

The Globe has now been rebuilt as a fully working and producing theater near its original site (largely thanks to the efforts of film director Sam Wanamaker) to give modern audiences an idea of the environment for which Shakespeare and other playwrights of the period were writing.

Contemporary theaters

Contemporary theaters are often non-traditional, such as very adaptable spaces, or theaters where audience and performers are not separated. A major example of this is the modular theater. This large theater has floors and walls divided into small movable sections, with the floor sections on adjustable hydraulic pylons, so that the space may be adjusted into any configuration for each individual play. As new styles of theater performance have evolved, so has the desire to improve or recreate performance venues. This applies equally to artistic and presentation techniques, such as stage lighting.

Specific designs of contemporary live theaters include proscenium, thrust, black box theater, theater in the round, amphitheater, and arena. In the classical Indian dance, Natya Shastra defines three stage types. In Australia and New Zealand a small and simple theater, particularly one contained within a larger venue, is a theatrette. The word originated in 1920s London, for a small-scale music venue.

Theatrical performances can also take place in venues adapted from other purposes, such as train carriages. In recent years the Edinburgh Fringe has seen performances in a lift (elevator) and a taxi.

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