Fourth wall  

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The fourth wall is the imaginary invisible wall at the front of the stage in a proscenium theater, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play. The concept is generally presumed to have originated in nineteenth century theatre with the advent of theatrical realism.

Breaking the fourth wall

The term "breaking the fourth wall" in theatre generally means when a character is showing his/her awareness of the audience. The term originated from Bertolt Brecht's theory of "epic theatre" that he developed from (and in contrast to) Konstantin Stanislavski's drama theory. Most often, the fourth wall is broken through a character directly addressing the audience, although the same effect can be achieved by breaking character, through dialogue, or by the characters interacting with objects outside the context of the work (e.g. a character is handed a prop by a stage hand).



Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Fourth wall" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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