theatrical style

Films in which performance, staging, dialogue, and design are deliberately artificial and non-naturalistic — actors inhabit stylized registers rather than disappearing into behavior, sets and costumes announce themselves as constructed, and the overall aesthetic contract with the audience is one of heightened theatricality embraced as expressive strategy rather than apologized for as excess. Distinguished from naturalistic-performance (which prizes behavior caught rather than constructed, actors dissolving into character) by foregrounding the performed, artificial quality of every element as the film's primary formal language; distinct from lush-maximalism (a visual-aesthetic register about color and ornamental saturation) by being specifically about the performance and staging register — a theatrical-style film may be visually spare so long as its acting and dramatic presentation remain stylized and anti-realist.