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70-593: Founded in 1986 in a pub, in 1999 the CST moved to a purpose-built seven-story theater complex on Navy Pier, where it has a main 500 seat space called the Courtyard, and the 200 seat Theater Upstairs. In 2017, it expanded on the pier into a connected three-theater-campus with the addition of The Yard, a flexible space that allows for versatile arrangements from 150 seats to 850 seats and from proscenium to in-the-round . The company's founding artistic director Barbara Gaines formed

140-517: A simulation running on the player's computer, with certain characters being aware of this fact and sometimes communicating directly with the player. In other cases of metafictional video games, the game alters the player's expectation of how the game should behave, which may make the player question if their own game system is at fault, helping to increase the immersion of the game. But since video games are inherently much more interactive than traditional films and literature, defining what truly breaks

210-466: A clearly defined " boccascena ", or scene mouth, as Italians call it, more like a picture frame than an arch but serving the same purpose: to deineate the stage and separate the audience from its action. While the proscenium arch became an important feature of the traditional European theatre, often becoming very large and elaborate, the original proscaenium front below the stage became plainer. The introduction of an orchestra pit for musicians during

280-412: A good view because the performers need only focus on one direction rather than continually moving around the stage to give a good view from all sides. A proscenium theatre layout also simplifies the hiding and obscuring of objects from the audience's view (sets, performers not currently performing, and theatre technology). Anything that is not meant to be seen is simply placed outside the "window" created by

350-653: A large-scale capital campaign to finance the move, and opened its 1999-2000 season in its new, state-of-the-art facility. Since then, CST has grown from the third-largest theater company in Chicago to the third-largest in the entire Midwest , at a rate 400% faster than the industry growth trend. Chicago Shakespeare Theater has, since October 1999, been in residence in a purpose built, seven-story, 75,000-square-metre (810,000 sq ft) facility at Chicago's Navy Pier , which houses its box office, administrative offices, and performance venues. The first performance at this facility

420-533: A new performance space in the late 1990s. In 1997, CST announced its plans to move from the Ruth Page to a new facility located at Navy Pier , a place better known for its family attractions and in fact the most popular tourist attraction in the Midwest . The move was accompanied by a public relations blitz, which even involved Mayor Richard M. Daley naming April 23, 1997, as Shakespeare Repertory Day. The company began

490-515: A pantomime conversation with the audience in The Disorderly Orderly (1964). The final scene of The Patsy (1964) is famous for revealing to the audience the movie as a movie, and Lewis as actor/director. In the 1986 teen film, Ferris Bueller's Day Off , the eponymous character breaks the fourth wall to talk directly to the audience throughout the entire movie. Characters in the 2017 mockumentary film I, Tonya consistently address

560-520: A proscenium arch, but the term thrust stage is more specific and more widely used). In dance history , the use of the proscenium arch has affected dance in different ways. Prior to the use of proscenium stages, early court ballets took place in large chambers where the audience members sat around and above the dance space. The performers, often led by the queen or king, focused in symmetrical figures and patterns of symbolic meaning. Ballet's choreographic patterns were being born. In addition, since dancing

630-414: A recording by the song's writer. The films Deadpool , Deadpool 2 , and Deadpool & Wolverine are specifically known for the main character Deadpool , played by Ryan Reynolds , consistently breaking the fourth wall. Funny Games has Paul and Peter repeatedly breaking the fourth wall by turning around and winking at the camera, talking to the audience by saying they are probably rooting for

700-423: A self-aware character that recognizes that they are in a video game, or having secret or bonus content set outside the game's narrative that can either extend the game world (such as with the use of false documents ) or provide "behind the scenes" type content. Such cases typically create a video game that includes a metafiction narrative, commonly presently characters in the game incorporating knowledge they are in

770-401: A specific in-universe issue. An example of this is in the first episode of the final season of the show Attack on Titan , where a newly introduced character, Falco Grice , starts to hallucinate about events that took place in the last 3 seasons. This literary device utilises self-referencing to trigger media-awareness in the recipient, used to signpost the drastic shift in perspective from

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840-511: A video game and narrates what the player sees as part of the UI. Eternal Darkness , which included a sanity meter, would simulate various common computer glitches to the player as the sanity meter drained, including the Blue Screen of Death . The Stanley Parable is also a well-known example of this, as the narrator from the game constantly tries to reason with the player, even going so far as to beg

910-467: A video game. For example, in Doki Doki Literature Club! , one of the characters ( Monika ) is aware that she is a part of a video game, and at the end, communicates with the player. To progress further in the story, the player must remove the “monika.chr” file (an action they take outside of the game). The plot of the game OneShot revolves around the fictional universe of the game being

980-426: Is metatheatrical . A similar effect of metareference is achieved when the performance convention of avoiding direct contact with the camera, generally used by actors in a television drama or film, is temporarily suspended. The phrase "breaking the fourth wall" is used to describe such effects in those media. Breaking the fourth wall is also possible in other media, such as video games and books . The acceptance of

1050-604: Is a late modern era example. It was popularized in the early 20th century during the Post-Modern literary movement . Artists like Virginia Woolf in To the Lighthouse and Kurt Vonnegut in Breakfast of Champions used the genre to question the accepted knowledge and sources of the culture. The use of metafiction or breaking the fourth wall in literature varies from that on stage in that

1120-656: Is known as a box set , the fourth of them would run along the line (technically called the proscenium ) dividing the room from the auditorium . The fourth wall , though, is a theatrical convention, rather than of set design . The actors ignore the audience, focus their attention exclusively on the dramatic world, and remain absorbed in its fiction, in a state that the theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski called "public solitude" (the ability to behave as one would in private, despite, in actuality, being watched intently while so doing, or to be "alone in public"). In this way,

1190-459: Is no English equivalent ... It would also be possible to retain the classical frons scaenae . The Italian "arco scenico" has been translated as "proscenium arch." In practice, however, the stage in the Teatro Olimpico runs from one edge of the seating area to the other, and only a very limited framing effect is created by the coffered ceiling over the stage and by the partition walls at

1260-794: Is part of Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the Shakespeare Theatre Association of America (STAA) and National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Chicago Shakespeare Theater was founded as the Chicago Shakespeare Workshop by former Artistic Director Barbara Gaines in 1986, a name which was changed a year later to the Chicago Shakespeare Repertory and finally in 1999 to Chicago Shakespeare Theater. It performed its first twelve seasons in residency at

1330-412: Is the metaphorical vertical plane of space in a theatre , usually surrounded on the top and sides by a physical proscenium arch (whether or not truly "arched") and on the bottom by the stage floor itself, which serves as the frame into which the audience observes from a more or less unified angle the events taking place upon the stage during a theatrical performance. The concept of the fourth wall of

1400-455: The proscaenium , again meaning "in front of the skene ". In the Greek and Roman theatre, no proscenium arch existed, in the modern sense, and the acting space was always fully in the view of the audience. However, Roman theatres were similar to modern proscenium theatres in the sense that the entire audience had a restricted range of views on the stage—all of which were from the front, rather than

1470-546: The Baroque era further devalued the proscaenium , bringing the lowest level of the audience's view forward to the front of the pit, where a barrier, typically in wood, screened the pit. What the Romans would have called the proscaenium is, in modern theatres with orchestra pits, normally painted black in order that it does not draw attention. In this early modern recreation of a Roman theatre, confusion seems to have been introduced to

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1540-643: The Eldian to the Marleyan side, and can be employed in all sorts of media. The use of breaking the fourth wall in television has sometimes been unintentional. In the Doctor Who episode " The Caves of Androzani ", the character of Morgus looks directly at the camera when thinking aloud. This was due to actor John Normington misunderstanding a stage direction, but the episode's director, Graeme Harper , felt that this helped increase dramatic tension, and decided not to reshoot

1610-503: The Hellenistic period it became an increasingly large and elaborate stone structure, often with three storeys. In Greek theatre, which unlike Roman included painted scenery, the proskenion might also carry scenery. In ancient Rome, the stage area in front of the scaenae frons (equivalent to the Greek skene) was known as the pulpitum , and the vertical front dropping from the stage to the orchestra floor, often in stone and decorated, as

1680-466: The Ruth Page Theater, where it performed titles ranging from better-known Shakespeare plays such as Hamlet and King Lear as well as lesser-known titles such as Troilus and Cressida and Timon of Athens . Although the theater was critically lauded for its innovative approach to classic works, it was limited by the age and spatial restrictions of the Ruth Page Theater and began looking for

1750-508: The Teatro Olimpico clearly show that the action took place in front of the scaenae frons and that the actors were rarely framed by the central archway). The Italian word for a scaenae frons is " proscenio ," a major change from Latin. One modern translator explains the wording problem that arises here: "[In this translation from Italian,] we retain the Italian proscenio in the text; it cannot be rendered proscenium for obvious reasons; and there

1820-581: The Teatro Olimpico's exact replication of the open and accessible Roman stage was the exception rather than the rule in sixteenth-century theatre design. Engravings suggest that the proscenium arch was already in use as early as 1560 at a production in Siena . The earliest true proscenium arch to survive in a permanent theatre is the Teatro Farnese in Parma (1618), many earlier such theatres having been lost. Parma has

1890-439: The actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th century onward, the rise of illusionism in staging practices, which culminated in the realism and naturalism of the theatre of the 19th century , led to the development of the fourth wall concept. The metaphor suggests a relationship to the mise-en-scène behind a proscenium arch . When a scene is set indoors and three of the walls of its room are presented onstage, in what

1960-408: The audience during interview sequences. Characters are removed from the rest of the group to speak and reflect on their experiences. The person behind the camera, the interviewer, is also referenced when the characters gaze and speak straight to the camera. The interviewer, however, is only indirectly spoken to and remains hidden. This technique, when used in shows with complex genres, serves to heighten

2030-470: The audience several times during each episode, giving the viewer comments on his own actions on the show. The same technique is also used, though less frequently, in the American adaptation of House of Cards by main character Frank Underwood . The Netflix series A Series of Unfortunate Events , based on Daniel Handler 's book series of the same name , incorporates some of the narrative elements from

2100-604: The audience throughout the movie's runtime. Kevin Costner breaks the fourth wall with a glance towards the camera near the end of Oliver Stone 's 1991 film JFK . Edward Norton breaks the fourth wall in 1999's Fight Club . Mike Myers broke the fourth wall in The Love Guru when he looked directly at the camera for a split-second when a Queen song came on as a reference to the famous Wayne's World head-banging scene. Eddie Murphy makes two brief, wordless glances at

2170-480: The audience to applaud in an effort to revive the fading Tinker Bell ("If you believe in fairies, clap your hands!"). One of the earliest recorded breakings of the fourth wall in serious cinema was in Mary MacLane 's 1918 silent film Men Who Have Made Love to Me , in which the enigmatic author – who portrays herself – interrupts the vignettes onscreen to address the audience directly. Oliver Hardy often broke

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2240-401: The audience's illusion or suspension of disbelief , by acknowledging them directly. Conway argues that this expansion of the magic circle in video games actually serves to more fully immerse a player into the fictional world rather than take the viewer out of the fictional world, as is more common in traditional fourth wall breaks. An example of this expansion of the magic circle can be found in

2310-479: The audience, and behave exactly as if the curtain had never risen". Critic Vincent Canby described it in 1987 as "that invisible scrim that forever separates the audience from the stage". The fourth wall did not exist as a concept for much of dramatic history. Classical plays from ancient Greece to the Renaissance have frequent direct addresses to the audience such as asides and soliloquies . The presence of

2380-435: The beginning of dance-performance as a form of entertainment like we know it today. Since the use of the proscenium stages, dances have developed and evolved into more complex figures, patterns, and movements. At this point, it was not only significantly important how the performers arrived to a certain shape on the stage during a performance, but also how graciously they executed their task. Additionally, these stages allowed for

2450-429: The books by having Lemony Snicket as a narrator character (played by Patrick Warburton ) speaking directly to the television viewer that frequently breaks the fourth wall to explain various literary wordplay in a manner similar to the book's narration. The protagonist of Fleabag also frequently uses the technique to provide exposition, internal monologues, and a running commentary to the audience. Every episode of

2520-601: The breaking of the fourth wall as a central plot point. The fourth wall was used as an integral part of the plot structure and to demonstrate the character played by Michael Caine, in his eponymous breakout role in the 1966 film Alfie , who frequently spoke to the audience to explain the thinking and motivation of the womanizing young man, speaking directly to the camera, narrating and justifying his actions, his words often contrasting with his actions. Jerry Lewis wrote in his 1971 book The Total Filmmaker , "Some film-makers believe you should never have an actor look directly into

2590-422: The camera deliberately break the fourth wall and re-frame the horizon, referencing the advice given to Spielberg by film director John Ford in the 1960s, which the film references. Select theatrical screenings of Francis Ford Coppola 's 2024 science fiction epic Megalopolis , including its private industry screenings and world premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival , had a person walk on stage in front of

2660-761: The camera in Trading Places . Jon Cryer breaks the fourth wall with a glance at the camera near the end of the 1986 film Pretty In Pink , as does Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit , Jason Sudeikis in We're The Millers , and Kurt Russell in Death Proof (a nod to Reynolds in Bandit ). Hulk Hogan breaks the wall by addressing the audience directly in Gremlins 2: The New Batch . Near

2730-421: The camera. At the start of the credit sequence, a voice can be heard shouting "Thank you, Mr. Forbes" to acknowledge producer Bryan Forbes . In the end, Bobbie Waterbury ( Jenny Agutter ) holds up a small slate on which "The End" is written in chalk. In Mr. Bean's Holiday , the entire cast, together with massed extras, break the fourth wall while joining in singing " La Mer " by Charles Trenet , accompanied by

2800-580: The camera. They maintain it makes the audience uneasy, and interrupts the screen story. I think that is nonsense, and usually I have my actors, in a single, look direct into the camera at least once in a film, if a point is to be served." Martin and Lewis look directly at the audience in You're Never Too Young (1955), and Lewis and co-star Stella Stevens each look directly into the camera several times in The Nutty Professor (1963), and Lewis' character holds

2870-416: The characters performing on stage are doing so in a four-walled environment, with the "wall" facing the audience being invisible. Many modern theatres attempt to do away with the fourth wall concept and so are instead designed with a thrust stage that projects out of the proscenium arch and "reaches" into the audience (technically, this can still be referred to as a proscenium theatre because it still contains

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2940-506: The comic tone of the show while also proving that the camera itself is far from a passive onlooker. Another approach to breaking the fourth wall is through a central narrator character who is part of the show's events, but at times speaks directly to the audience. For example, Francis Urquhart in the British TV drama series House of Cards , To Play the King and The Final Cut addresses

3010-402: The corners of the stage where the seating area abuts the floorboards. The result is that in this theatre "the architectural spaces for the audience and the action ... are distinct in treatment yet united by their juxtaposition; no proscenium arch separates them." A proscenium arch creates a "window" around the scenery and performers. The advantages are that it gives everyone in the audience

3080-433: The end of Nobody's Fool , Tiffany Haddish breaks the fourth wall by declaring that the film is not over and then proceeding to ruin a wedding ceremony. In The Railway Children the entire cast breaks the fourth wall and performs a curtain call as the credits roll. The camera moves slowly along a railway track towards a train that is decked in flags, in front of which all of the cast is assembled, waving and cheering to

3150-472: The experience is not communal but personal to the reader and develops a self-consciousness within the character/reader relationship that works to build trust and expand thought. This does not involve an acknowledgment of a character's fictive nature. Breaking the fourth wall in literature is not always metafiction. Modern examples of breaking the fourth wall include Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota , and William Goldman's The Princess Bride . Sorj Chalandon wrote

3220-465: The family, addressing the film is not at its feature runtime and smiling at the camera at the end of the film. The 2022 Persuasion film was criticized for its modernization take on the classic 1817 Jane Austen novel by having the main protagonist Anne Elliot (played by Dakota Johnson ) constantly breaking the fourth wall by interacting with the audience. The last shot of Steven Spielberg 's 2022 semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans has

3290-409: The fourth wall is violating this performance convention, which has been adopted more generally in the drama. This can be done by either directly referring to the audience, to the play as a play, or the characters' fictionality. The temporary suspension of the convention in this way draws attention to its use in the rest of the performance. This act of drawing attention to a play's performance conventions

3360-473: The fourth wall exists regardless of the presence of any actual walls in the set, the physical arrangement of the theatre building or performance space, or the actors' distance from or proximity to the audience. In practice, performers often feed off the energy of the audience in a palpable way while modulating performance around the collective response, especially in pacing action around outbursts of laughter, so that lines are not delivered inaudibly. Breaking

3430-481: The fourth wall in his films with Stan Laurel , when he would stare directly at the camera to seek sympathy from viewers. Groucho Marx spoke directly to the audience in Animal Crackers (1930), and Horse Feathers (1932), in the latter film advising them to "go out to the lobby" during Chico Marx 's piano interlude. Comedy films by Mel Brooks , Monty Python , and Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker frequently broke

3500-410: The fourth wall in the video game medium becomes difficult. Steven Conway, writing for Gamasutra , suggests that in video games, many purported examples of breaking the fourth wall are actually better understood as relocations of the fourth wall or expansions of the " magic circle " (the fictional game world) to encompass the player. This is in contrast to traditional fourth wall breaks, which break

3570-421: The fourth wall is an established convention of modern realistic theatre , which has led some artists to draw direct attention to it for dramatic or comic effect when a boundary is "broken" when an actor or character addresses the audience directly. Breaking the fourth wall is common in pantomime and children's theatre where, for example, a character might ask the children for help, as when Peter Pan appeals to

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3640-473: The fourth wall, such that with these films "the fourth wall is so flimsy and so frequently shattered that it might as well not exist", according to The A.V. Club . Woody Allen broke the fourth wall repeatedly in his movie Annie Hall (1977), as he explained, "because I felt many of the people in the audience had the same feelings and the same problems. I wanted to talk to them directly and confront them." His 1985 film The Purple Rose of Cairo features

3710-565: The game Evidence: The Last Ritual , in which the player receives an in-game email at their real-life email address and must visit out-of-game websites to solve some of the puzzles in the game. Other games may expand the magic circle to include the game's hardware. For example, X-Men for the Mega Drive/Genesis requires players to reset their game console at a certain point to reset the X-Men's in-game Hazard Room, while Metal Gear Solid asks

3780-515: The player to put the DualShock controller on their neck to simulate a back massage being given in-game. Other examples include the idle animation of Sonic the Hedgehog in his games where the on-screen character would look to the player and tap his foot impatiently if left alone for a while, and one level of Max Payne has the eponymous character come to the realization he and other characters are in

3850-484: The player to switch off the game at one point. The method of breaking the fourth wall in literature is a metalepsis (the transgression of narrative levels), which is a technique often used in metafiction . The metafiction genre occurs when a character within a literary work acknowledges the reality that they are in fact a fictitious being. The use of the fourth wall in literature can be traced back as far as The Canterbury Tales and Don Quixote . Northanger Abbey

3920-503: The projection screen and address the protagonist, Cesar, who seemingly breaks the fourth wall by replying in real time. On television, the fourth wall has broken throughout the history of the medium. Fourth wall breakage is common in comedy, and is used frequently by Bugs Bunny and other characters in Looney Tunes and other later animated shows, as well as the live-action 1960s sketch comedy of Monty Python's Flying Circus , which

3990-414: The proscenium arch, either in the wings or in the flyspace above the stage. The phrase "breaking the proscenium" or "breaking the fourth wall" refers to when a performer addresses the audience directly as part of the dramatic production. Proscenium theatres have fallen out of favor in some theatre circles because they perpetuate the fourth wall concept. The staging in proscenium theatres often implies that

4060-412: The scenes. Given their interactive nature, nearly all video games break the fourth wall by asking for the player's participation and having user interface elements on the screen (such as explanations of the game's controls) that address the player rather than their character. Methods of fourth wall breaking within the narrative include having the character face the direction of the player/screen, having

4130-546: The sides or back. The oldest surviving indoor theatre of the modern era, the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza (1585), is sometimes incorrectly referred to as the first example of a proscenium theatre. The Teatro Olimpico was an academic reconstruction of a Roman theatre. It has a plain proscaenium at the front of the stage, dropping to the orchestra level, now usually containing "stalls" seating, but no proscenium arch. However,

4200-595: The sitcom Saved by the Bell breaks the fourth wall during the introduction by the character Zack Morris . Most episodes have several other fourth wall breaks. This is similar to how The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air , Clarissa Explains It All and Malcolm in the Middle use fourth wall breaks to set up stories or have characters comment on situations. Furthermore, breaking the fourth wall can also be used in meta-referencing in order to draw attention to or invite reflection about

4270-453: The stage level to the "stalls" level of the audience, which was the original meaning of the proscaenium in Roman theatres , where this mini-facade was given more architectural emphasis than is the case in modern theatres. A proscenium stage is structurally different from a thrust stage or an arena stage , as explained below. In later Hellenistic Greek theatres the proskenion (προσκήνιον)

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4340-690: The theater in 1986, when it began performances on the roof of the Red Lion Pub in the city's Lincoln Park neighborhood . In 1999, the company received permission to build its permanent home: a two-venue facility at Navy Pier . Productions at the theater include works from the Shakespearean canon as well as other plays and musicals. In addition to its own original productions, the Chicago Shakespeare Theater also hosts touring productions from other theater companies. Chicago Shakespeare Theater

4410-454: The theatre stage space that faces the audience is essentially the same. It can be considered as a social construct which divides the actors and their stage-world from the audience which has come to witness it. But since the curtain usually comes down just behind the proscenium arch, it has a physical reality when the curtain is down, hiding the stage from view. The same plane also includes the drop, in traditional theatres of modern times, from

4480-411: The transparency of the fourth wall is part of the suspension of disbelief between a work of fiction and an audience, allowing them to enjoy the fiction as though they were observing real events. The concept is usually attributed to the philosopher, critic and dramatist Denis Diderot , who wrote in 1758 that actors and writers should "imagine a huge wall across the front of the stage, separating you from

4550-505: The troupe also brought to their feature films. George Burns regularly broke the fourth wall on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (1950). Another convention of breaking the fourth wall is often seen on mockumentary sitcoms, including The Office . Mockumentary shows that break the fourth wall poke fun at the documentary genre with the intention of increasing the satiric tone of the show. Characters in The Office directly speak to

4620-414: The use of stage effects generated by ingenious machinery. It was the beginning of scenography design, and perhaps also it was also the origin of the use of backstage personnel or "stage hands". Fourth wall The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this "wall", the convention assumes

4690-539: The use of the revived term in Italian. This emulation of the Roman model extended to refer to the stage area as the "proscenium", and some writers have incorrectly referred to the theatre's scaenae frons as a proscenium, and have even suggested that the central archway in the middle of the scaenae frons was the inspiration for the later development of the full-size proscenium arch. There is no evidence at all for this assumption (indeed, contemporary illustrations of performances at

4760-618: Was Eric Idle reading from his novel The Road to Mars . The 510-seat Courtyard Theater, which is the primary production venue for CST, features state-of-the-art technology and acoustics together with a versatile thrust stage and deep proscenium, that create a flexible performance space. A second theater, the 200-seat black box "Upstairs" space, is devoted to smaller but still-popular productions such as The Second City 's Romeo and Juliet Musical: The People Vs. Friar Laurence, The Man Who Killed Romeo and Juliet . Proscenium A proscenium ( Ancient Greek : προσκήνιον , proskḗnion )

4830-489: Was a rather narrow raised stage where solo actors performed, while the Greek chorus and musicians remained in the "orchestra" in front and below it, and there were often further areas for performing from above and behind the proskenion, on and behind the skene . Skene is the Greek word (meaning "tent") for the tent, and later building, at the back of the stage from which actors entered, and which often supported painted scenery. In

4900-399: Was considered a way of socializing, most of the court ballets finished with a ‘grand ballet’ followed by a ball in which the members of the audience joined the performance. Later on, the use of the proscenium stage for performances established a separation of the audience from the performers. Therefore, more devotion was placed on the performers, and in what was occurring in the ‘show.’ It was

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