Hamilton, Ontario
Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. An industrialized city in the Golden Horseshoe at the west end of Lake Ontario, Hamilton has a population of 536,917, a metropolitan population of 747,545; the city is located about 60 km southwest of Toronto, with which the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area is formed. On January 1, 2001, the current boundaries of Hamilton was created through the amalgamation of the original city with other municipalities of the Regional Municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth. Residents of the city are known as Hamiltonians. Since 1981, the metropolitan area has been listed as the ninth largest in Canada and the third largest in Ontario. Hamilton is home to the Royal Botanical Gardens, the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, the Bruce Trail, McMaster University, Redeemer University College and Mohawk College. McMaster University is ranked 4th in Canada and 77th in the world by Times Higher Education Rankings 2018–19 and has a well-known medical school. In pre-colonial times, the Neutral First Nation used much of the land but were driven out by the Five Nations who were allied with the British against the Huron and their French allies.
A member of the Iroquois Confederacy provided the route and name for Mohawk Road, which included King Street in the lower city. Following the United States gaining independence after their American Revolutionary War, in 1784, about 10,000 United Empire Loyalists settled in Upper Canada, chiefly in Niagara, around the Bay of Quinte, along the St. Lawrence River between Lake Ontario and Montreal; the Crown granted them land in these areas in order to develop Upper Canada and to compensate them for losses in the United States. With former First Nations lands available for purchase, these new settlers were soon followed by many more Americans, attracted by the availability of inexpensive, arable land. At the same time, large numbers of Iroquois, allied with Britain arrived from the United States and were settled on reserves west of Lake Ontario as compensation for lands they lost in what was now the United States. During the War of 1812, British regulars and Canadian militia defeated invading American troops at the Battle of Stoney Creek, fought in what is now a park in eastern Hamilton.
The town of Hamilton was conceived by George Hamilton, when he purchased farm holdings of James Durand, the local Member of the British Legislative Assembly, shortly after the War of 1812. Nathaniel Hughson, a property owner to the north, cooperated with George Hamilton to prepare a proposal for a courthouse and jail on Hamilton's property. Hamilton offered the land to the crown for the future site. Durand was empowered by Hughson and Hamilton to sell property holdings which became the site of the town; as he had been instructed, Durand circulated the offers at York during a session of the Legislative Assembly, which established a new Gore District, of which the Hamilton townsite was a member. This town was not the most important centre of the Gore District. An early indication of Hamilton's sudden prosperity was marked by the fact that in 1816 it was chosen over Ancaster, Ontario that year to be the administrative center for the new Gore District. Another dramatic economic turnabout for Hamilton occurred in 1832 when a canal was cut through the outer sand bar that enabled Hamilton to become a major port.
A permanent jail was not constructed until 1832, when a cut-stone design was completed on Prince's Square, one of the two squares created in 1816. Subsequently, the first police board and the town limits were defined by statute on February 13, 1833. Official city status was achieved on June 9, 1846, by an act of Parliament, 9 Victoria Chapter 73. By 1845, the population was 6,475. In 1846, there were useful roads to many communities as well as stage coaches and steamboats to Toronto and Niagara. Eleven cargo schooners were owned in Hamilton. Eleven churches were in operation. A reading room provided access to newspapers from other cities and from England and the U. S. In addition to stores of all types, four banks, tradesmen of various types, sixty-five taverns, industry in the community included three breweries, ten importers of dry goods and groceries, five importers of hardware, two tanneries, three coachmakers, a marble and a stone works; as the city grew, several prominent buildings were constructed in the late 19th century, including the Grand Lodge of Canada in 1855, West Flamboro Methodist Church in 1879, a public library in 1890, the Right House department store in 1893.
The first commercial telephone service in Canada, the first telephone exchange in the British Empire, the second telephone exchange in all of North America were each established in the city between 1877–78. The city had several interurban electric street railways and two inclines, all powered by the Cataract Power Co. Though suffering through the Hamilton Street Railway strike of 1906, with industrial businesses expanding, Hamilton's population doubled between 1900 and 1914. Two steel manufacturing companies and Dofasco, were formed in 1910 and 1912, respectively. Procter & Gamble and the Beech-Nut Packing Company opened manufacturing plants in 1914 and 1922 their first outside the US. Population and economic growth continued until the 1960s. In 1929 the city's first high-rise building, the Pigott Building, was constructed.
Martin Short
Martin Hayter Short is a Canadian-American comedian, actor and writer. He is known for his work on the television programs Saturday Night Live, he has starred in comedy films, such as Three Amigos, Three Fugitives, Father of the Bride, Pure Luck, Captain Ron, Father of the Bride Part II, Mars Attacks!, Jungle 2 Jungle, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, created the characters Jiminy Glick and Ed Grimley. In 1999, he won a Tony Award for his lead performance in a Broadway revival of Little Me. Short was born in Hamilton, the youngest of five children of Olive Grace, a concertmistress of the Hamilton Symphony Orchestra, Charles Patrick Short, a corporate executive with Stelco, a Canadian steel company, he and his siblings were raised as Catholics. He had three older brothers, David and Brian, one older sister, Nora. Short's father was an Irish Catholic emigrant from Crossmaglen, South Armagh, who came to North America as a stowaway during the Irish War of Independence. Short's mother was of Irish descent.
She encouraged his early creative endeavours. His eldest brother, was killed in a car accident in Montréal, Québec, in 1962 when Short was 12, his mother died of cancer in 1968, his father two years of complications from a stroke. Short attended Westdale Secondary School and graduated from McMaster University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Work in 1971; when Short graduated from McMaster University, he intended to pursue a career in social work. Among other members of that production's cast were Victor Garber, Gilda Radner, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Andrea Martin. Short stated in the documentary Love, Gilda that he and Gilda Radner dated each other on and off during that time, he was subsequently cast in several television shows and plays, including the drama Fortune and Men's Eyes. He worked in Canada through 1979. In 1979, Short starred in the US sitcom The Associates about a group of young novice lawyers working at a Wall Street law firm. In 1980, he joined the cast of I'm a Big Girl Now, a sitcom starring Danny Thomas.
Canova was offered the sitcom because of her success playing Corinne Tate Flotsky on ABC's Soap and left Soap shortly before Short's newlywed wife Nancy Dolman joined it. Short was encouraged to pursue comedy by McMaster classmates Eugene Levy and Dave Thomas, whom he joined in the improvisation group The Second City in Toronto, Ontario, in 1977, he came to public notice when the group produced a show for television, Second City Television or SCTV, which ran for several years in Canada the United States. Short appeared on SCTV in 1982–83. At SCTV, Short developed several characters before moving on to Saturday Night Live for the 1984–85 season: Talk show host Brock Linehan, based on the Canadian interviewer Brian Linehan Aged songwriter Irving Cohen thought to be loosely based on American composers Irving Caesar and/or Irving Berlin, but inspired by Sophie Tucker Entertainer Jackie Rogers, Jr. Current-events commentator Troy Soren Industrialist and art patron Bradley P. Allen Defense attorney Nathan Thurm Oddball man-child Ed Grimley featured on SNL and in his own short-lived animated television series in 1989 titled The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley, the only children's animated series adapted from an SCTV character and a Saturday Night Live character.
Short joined Saturday Night Live for the 1984–85 season. He helped revive the show with his many characters for season ten. "Short's appearance on SNL helped to revive the show's fanbase, which had flagged after the departure of Eddie Murphy, in turn, would launch his successful career in films and television." His SNL characters included numerous holdovers from his SCTV days, most notably, his Ed Grimley character, depicted on Saturday Night Live as a geeky everyman who finds himself in bizarre situations rather than a miscast bad actor in several film and TV show parodies. He did impressions of such celebrities as Jerry Lewis and Katharine Hepburn. In addition to his work on SCTV and SNL, Short has starred in several television specials and series of his own. In 1985, Short starred in the one-hour Showtime special, Martin Short: Concert for the North Americas; this was Short's first live concert, interspersed with studio sketches and a wraparound featuring Jackie Rogers Jr. Co-produced by the CBC, this aired as The Martin Short Comedy Special in Canada in March 1986.
In 1989, Short headlined another one-hour comedy special, this time for HBO, I, Martin Short, Goes Hollywood, Short's classic send-up of all things Hollywood. It featured many of his characters including Jackie Rogers Jr.. Short has had three television shows called The Martin Short Show, including a sitcom, The Martin Short Show, 1994. Short starred as Jiminy Glick on Comedy Central's Primetime Glick, he interviewed celebrities as the character Jiminy Glick. The New York Times in 2002 referred to the character as "the most unpredictable and hilariously uninhibited comic creation to hit TV since Bart Simpson was in diapers."In addition to his own series, Short has guest starred on several shows including Arrested Development, Muppets Tonight, Law & Orde
North America
North America is a continent within the Northern Hemisphere and all within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers, about 16.5% of the earth's land area and about 4.8% of its total surface. North America is the third largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, the fourth by population after Asia and Europe. In 2013, its population was estimated at nearly 579 million people in 23 independent states, or about 7.5% of the world's population, if nearby islands are included. North America was reached by its first human populations during the last glacial period, via crossing the Bering land bridge 40,000 to 17,000 years ago; the so-called Paleo-Indian period is taken to have lasted until about 10,000 years ago. The Classic stage spans the 6th to 13th centuries.
The Pre-Columbian era ended in 1492, the transatlantic migrations—the arrival of European settlers during the Age of Discovery and the Early Modern period. Present-day cultural and ethnic patterns reflect interactions between European colonists, indigenous peoples, African slaves and their descendants. Owing to the European colonization of the Americas, most North Americans speak English, Spanish or French, their culture reflects Western traditions; the Americas are accepted as having been named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci by the German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann. Vespucci, who explored South America between 1497 and 1502, was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a different landmass unknown by Europeans. In 1507, Waldseemüller produced a world map, in which he placed the word "America" on the continent of South America, in the middle of what is today Brazil, he explained the rationale for the name in the accompanying book Cosmographiae Introductio:... ab Americo inventore... quasi Americi terram sive Americam.
For Waldseemüller, no one should object to the naming of the land after its discoverer. He used the Latinized version of Vespucci's name, but in its feminine form "America", following the examples of "Europa", "Asia" and "Africa". Other mapmakers extended the name America to the northern continent, In 1538, Gerard Mercator used America on his map of the world for all the Western Hemisphere; some argue that because the convention is to use the surname for naming discoveries, the derivation from "Amerigo Vespucci" could be put in question. In 1874, Thomas Belt proposed a derivation from the Amerrique mountains of Central America. Marcou corresponded with Augustus Le Plongeon, who wrote: "The name AMERICA or AMERRIQUE in the Mayan language means, a country of perpetually strong wind, or the Land of the Wind, and... the can mean... a spirit that breathes, life itself." The United Nations formally recognizes "North America" as comprising three areas: Northern America, Central America, The Caribbean.
This has been formally defined by the UN Statistics Division. The term North America maintains various definitions in accordance with context. In Canadian English, North America refers to the land mass as a whole consisting of Mexico, the United States, Canada, although it is ambiguous which other countries are included, is defined by context. In the United States of America, usage of the term may refer only to Canada and the US, sometimes includes Greenland and Mexico, as well as offshore islands. In France, Portugal, Romania and the countries of Latin America, the cognates of North America designate a subcontinent of the Americas comprising Canada, the United States, Mexico, Greenland, Saint Pierre et Miquelon, Bermuda. North America has been referred to by other names. Spanish North America was referred to as Northern America, this was the first official name given to Mexico. Geographically the North American continent has many subregions; these include cultural and geographic regions. Economic regions included those formed by trade blocs, such as the North American Trade Agreement bloc and Central American Trade Agreement.
Linguistically and culturally, the continent could be divided into Latin America. Anglo-America includes most of Northern America and Caribbean islands with English-speaking populations; the southern North American continent is composed of two regions. These are the Caribbean; the north of the continent maintains recognized regions as well. In contrast to the common definition of "North America", which encompasses the whole continent, the term "North America" is sometimes used to refer only to Mexico, the United States, Greenland; the term Northern America refers to the northern-most countries and territories of North America: the United States, Bermuda, St. Pierre and Miquelon and Greenland. Although the term does not refer to a unifie
Orchestra
An orchestra is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families, including bowed string instruments such as the violin, viola and double bass, brass instruments such as the horn, trumpet and tuba, woodwinds such as the flute, oboe and bassoon, percussion instruments such as the timpani, bass drum, snare drum and cymbals, each grouped in sections. Other instruments such as the piano and celesta may sometimes appear in a fifth keyboard section or may stand alone, as may the concert harp and, for performances of some modern compositions, electronic instruments. A full-size orchestra may sometimes be called philharmonic orchestra; the actual number of musicians employed in a given performance may vary from seventy to over one hundred musicians, depending on the work being played and the size of the venue. The term chamber orchestra refers to smaller-sized ensembles of about fifty musicians or fewer. Orchestras that specialize in the Baroque music of, for example, Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, or Classical repertoire, such as that of Haydn and Mozart, tend to be smaller than orchestras performing a Romantic music repertoire, such as the symphonies of Johannes Brahms.
The typical orchestra grew in size throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, reaching a peak with the large orchestras called for in the works of Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler. Orchestras are led by a conductor who directs the performance with movements of the hands and arms made easier for the musicians to see by use of a conductor's baton; the conductor sets the tempo and shapes the sound of the ensemble. The conductor prepares the orchestra by leading rehearsals before the public concert, in which the conductor provides instructions to the musicians on their interpretation of the music being performed; the leader of the first violin section called the concertmaster plays an important role in leading the musicians. In the Baroque music era, orchestras were led by the concertmaster or by a chord-playing musician performing the basso continuo parts on a harpsichord or pipe organ, a tradition that some 20th century and 21st century early music ensembles continue. Orchestras play a wide range of repertoire, including symphonies and ballet overtures, concertos for solo instruments, as pit ensembles for operas and some types of musical theatre.
Amateur orchestras include those made up of students from an elementary school or a high school, youth orchestras, community orchestras. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ὀρχήστρα, the name for the area in front of a stage in ancient Greek theatre reserved for the Greek chorus; the typical symphony orchestra consists of four groups of related musical instruments called the woodwinds, brass and strings. Other instruments such as the piano and celesta may sometimes be grouped into a fifth section such as a keyboard section or may stand alone, as may the concert harp and electric and electronic instruments; the orchestra, depending on the size, contains all of the standard instruments in each group. In the history of the orchestra, its instrumentation has been expanded over time agreed to have been standardized by the classical period and Ludwig van Beethoven's influence on the classical model. In the 20th and 21st century, new repertory demands expanded the instrumentation of the orchestra, resulting in a flexible use of the classical-model instruments and newly developed electric and electronic instruments in various combinations.
The terms symphony orchestra and philharmonic orchestra may be used to distinguish different ensembles from the same locality, such as the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. A symphony orchestra will have over eighty musicians on its roster, in some cases over a hundred, but the actual number of musicians employed in a particular performance may vary according to the work being played and the size of the venue. Chamber orchestra refers to smaller-sized ensembles; the term concert orchestra may be used, as in the BBC Concert Orchestra and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. The so-called "standard complement" of doubled winds and brass in the orchestra from the first half of the 19th century is attributed to the forces called for by Beethoven; the composer's instrumentation always included paired flutes, clarinets, bassoons and trumpets. The exceptions to this are his Symphony No. 4, Violin Concerto, Piano Concerto No. 4, which each specify a single flute. Beethoven calculated the expansion of this particular timbral "palette" in Symphonies 3, 5, 6, 9 for an innovative effect.
The third horn in the "Eroica" Symphony arrives to provide not only some harmonic flexibility, but the effect of "choral" brass in the Trio movement. Piccolo and trombones add to the triumphal finale of his Symphony No. 5. A piccolo and a pair of trombones help deliver the effect of storm and sunshine in the Sixth known as the Pastoral Symphony; the Ninth asks for a second pair of horns, for reasons similar to the "Eroica".
The Canadian Encyclopedia
The Canadian Encyclopedia is a source of information on Canada published by Historica Canada of Toronto. Articles appear in French, it is available at no cost. The Canadian Encyclopedia includes 14,000 articles in each language on numerous subjects including history, popular culture, people, politics, First Nations and science; the website provides access to the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, The Canadian Encyclopedia Junior Edition, Maclean's magazine articles and Timelines of Canadian history. Canada had been without a national encyclopedia since the 1957 Encyclopedia Canadiana; when looking through the Canadian entries in existing encyclopedias such as Random House, Canadian nationalist and book publisher Mel Hurtig found blatant errors and omissions. In response, in the 1980s he launched a project to create a wholly new Canadian encyclopedia with support from Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed; the Editor-in-Chief James Harley Marsh recruited more than 3,000 authors to write for it. They made index cards for every fact in the encyclopedia, signed off by the researcher, sourced from three sources.
They had to have every article read by three outside readers. The whole thing was proofread by an independent source. There were over 3,000 people who contributed to the content and accuracy of the encyclopedia's entries; the first edition of The Canadian Encyclopedia was published in three volumes in 1985 for $125/set and sold out within days of publication – a Canadian bestseller. A revised and expanded edition was sold out as well, it was the first encyclopedia in the world to use a computer to help compile, typeset and print it. It was encoded in a markup language precursor of HTML. In September 1990, Hurtig published the five-volume Junior Encyclopedia of Canada, the first encyclopedia for young Canadians. Hurtig sold his publishing company with it the encyclopedia. In 1995, the first edition of The Canadian Encyclopedia Plus was published as a digital CD-ROM. In 1999, the Historica Foundation, made a full version of The Canadian Encyclopedia available online. List of online encyclopedias Marsh, James H..
The Canadian Encyclopedia. The Canadian Encyclopedia. ISBN 978-0-7710-2099-5. Official website
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, or Emmy, is an American award that recognizes excellence in the television industry, is the equivalent of an Academy Award, the Tony Award, the Grammy Award. Because Emmys are given in various sectors of the American television industry, they are presented in different annual ceremonies held throughout the year; the two events that receive the most media coverage are the Primetime Emmy Awards and the Daytime Emmy Awards, which recognize outstanding work in American primetime and daytime entertainment programming, respectively. Other notable Emmy Award ceremonies are those honoring national sports programming, national news and documentary shows, national business and financial reporting, technological and engineering achievements in television, including the Primetime Engineering Emmy Awards. Regional Emmy Awards are presented throughout the country at various times through the year, recognizing excellence in local and statewide television. In addition, International Emmys are awarded for excellence in TV programming produced and aired outside the United States.
Three related but separate organizations present the Emmy Awards: the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Each is responsible for administering a particular set of Emmy ceremonies; the Los Angeles–based Academy of Television Arts & Sciences established the Emmy Award as part of an image-building and public relations opportunity. The first Emmy Awards ceremony took place on January 25, 1949, at the Hollywood Athletic Club, but to honor shows produced and aired locally in the Los Angeles area. Shirley Dinsdale has the distinction of receiving the first Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Television Personality, during that first awards ceremony; the term "Emmy" is a French alteration of the television crew slang term "Immy", the nickname for an "image orthicon", a camera tube used in TV production. In the 1950s, the ATAS expanded the Emmys into a national event, presenting the awards to shows aired nationwide on broadcast television.
In 1955, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences was formed in New York City as a sister organization to serve members on the East Coast, help to supervise the Emmys. The NATAS established regional chapters throughout the United States, with each one developing their own local Emmy awards show for local programming; the ATAS still however maintained its separate regional ceremony honoring local programming in the Los Angeles Area. There was only one Emmy Awards ceremony held per year to honor shows nationally broadcast in the United States. In 1974, the first Daytime Emmy Awards ceremony was held to honor achievement in national daytime programming. Other area-specific Emmy Awards ceremonies soon followed; the International Emmy Awards, honoring television programs produced and aired outside the U. S. was established in the early 1970s. Meanwhile, all Emmys awarded prior to the emergence of these separate, area-specific ceremonies are listed along with the Primetime Emmy Awards in the ATAS's official records.
In 1977, due to various conflicts, the ATAS and the NATAS agreed to split ties. However, they agreed to share ownership of the Emmy statue and trademark, with each responsible for administering a specific set of award ceremonies. There was an exception regarding the Engineering Awards: the NATAS continues to administer the Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards, while the ATAS holds the separate Primetime Engineering Emmy Awards. With the rise of cable television in the 1980s, cable programs first became eligible for the Primetime Emmys in 1988 and the Daytime Emmys in 1989. In 2011, the ABC Television Network cancelled the soap operas All My Children and One Life to Live and sold the two shows' licensing rights to the production company Prospect Park so they could be continued on web television; the ATAS began accepting original online-only web television programs in 2013. The Emmy statuette, depicting a winged woman holding an atom, was designed by television engineer Louis McManus, who used his wife as the model.
The TV Academy rejected forty-seven proposals before settling on McManus's design in 1948. The statuette "has since become the symbol of the TV Academy's goal of supporting and uplifting the art and science of television: The wings represent the muse of art. However, "Ike" was the popular nickname of World War II hero and future U. S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Academy members wanted something unique. Television engineer and the third academy president Harry Lubcke suggested the name "Immy", a term used for the image orthicon tube used in the early cameras. After "Immy" was chosen, it was feminized to Emmy to match their female statuette; each Primetime Emmy statuette weighs six pounds, twelve-and-a-half ounces, is made of copper, nickel and gold. The statue stands 15.5 inches tall with weight of 88 oz. The Regional Emmy Award statuette is 11.5 inches tall with a base diameter of 5.5 inches and weight of 48 oz. Each takes five and a half hours to
Actor
An actor is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film and television; the analogous Greek term is ὑποκριτής "one who answers". The actor's interpretation of their role—the art of acting—pertains to the role played, whether based on a real person or fictional character. Interpretation occurs when the actor is "playing themselves", as in some forms of experimental performance art. In ancient Greece and Rome, the medieval world, the time of William Shakespeare, only men could become actors, women's roles were played by men or boys. After the English Restoration of 1660, women began to appear on stage in England. In modern times in pantomime and some operas, women play the roles of boys or young men. After 1660 in England, when women first started to appear on stage, the terms actor or actress were used interchangeably for female performers, but influenced by the French actrice, actress became the used term for women in theater and film.
The etymology is a simple derivation from actor with -ess added. When referring to groups of performers of both sexes, actors is preferred. Actor is used before the full name of a performer as a gender-specific term. Within the profession, the re-adoption of the neutral term dates to the post-war period of the 1950 and'60s, when the contributions of women to cultural life in general were being reviewed; when The Observer and The Guardian published their new joint style guide in 2010, it stated "Use for both male and female actors. The guide's authors stated that "actress comes into the same category as authoress, manageress,'lady doctor','male nurse' and similar obsolete terms that date from a time when professions were the preserve of one sex.". "As Whoopi Goldberg put it in an interview with the paper:'An actress can only play a woman. I'm an actor – I can play anything.'" The UK performers' 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. With regard to the cinema of the United States, the gender-neutral term "player" was common in film in the silent film era and the early days of the Motion Picture Production Code, but in the 2000s in a film context, it is deemed archaic. However, "player" remains in use in the theatre incorporated into the name of a theatre group or company, such as the American Players, the East West Players, etc. Actors in improvisational theatre may be referred to as "players". In 2015, Forbes reported that "...just 21 of the 100 top-grossing films of 2014 featured a female lead or co-lead, while only 28.1% of characters in 100 top-grossing films were female...". "In the U. S. there is an "industry-wide in salaries of all scales. On average, white women get paid 78 cents to every dollar a white man makes, while Hispanic women earn 56 cents to a white male's dollar, Black women 64 cents and Native American women just 59 cents to that."
Forbes' analysis of US acting salaries in 2013 determined that the "...men on Forbes' list of top-paid actors for that year made 21/2 times as much money as the top-paid actresses. That means that Hollywood's best-compensated actresses made just 40 cents for every dollar that the best-compensated men made." The first recorded case of a performing actor occurred in 534 BC when the Greek performer Thespis stepped onto the stage at the Theatre Dionysus to become the first known person to speak words as a character in a play or story. Prior to Thespis' act, Grecian stories were only expressed in song, in third person narrative. In honor of Thespis, actors are called Thespians; the male actors in the theatre of ancient Greece performed in three types of drama: tragedy and the satyr play. Western theatre developed and expanded under the Romans; the theatre of ancient Rome was a thriving and diverse art form, ranging from festival performances of street theatre, nude dancing, acrobatics, to the staging of situation comedies, to high-style, verbally elaborate tragedies.
As the Western Roman Empire fell into decay through the 4th and 5th centuries, the seat of Roman power shifted to Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire. Records show that mime, scenes or recitations from tragedies and comedies and other entertainments were popular. From the 5th century, Western Europe was plunged into a period of general disorder. Small nomadic bands of actors traveled around Europe throughout the period, performing wherever they could find an audience. Traditionally, actors were not of high status. Early Middle Ages actors were denounced by the Church during the Dark Ages, as they were viewed as dangerous and pagan. In many parts of Europe, traditional beliefs of the region and time period meant actors could not receive a Christian burial. 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
