Breaking The Fourth Wall Essay

The concept of the fourth wall, a key component of naturalistic theatre, film, and television, is a vital aspect of the contemporary actor-audience relationship with most pieces of art. Due to this being the norm for both Broadway and Hollywood, whenever someone decides to “break the fourth wall”, you can’t miss it. In my research, I am treating this technique as any time that a character acknowledges the existence of an audience to their plights or references the fact that they are part of an artistic work.
The wall-break technique serves as a way to manipulate the relationship between audience and performer, and it is an incredibly effective way to engage the audience in the going-ons of a piece. It is often used for a witty, metatheatrical purpose, a quick bit of humor that keeps the watcher on their toes. Plays such as The Pirates of Penzance, Our Town, Avenue Q, The Glass Menagerie, Hair, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum all in some capacity take advantage of the people sitting in their seats around them, and the reactions they are bound to get.
Even without the live audience, the device of breaking of the fourth wall is also a common tool in modern television and film, with comedies such as Disney’s The Emperor's New Groove, Scooby Doo’s various animated runs, the documentary style sitcoms The Office (U.S.) and Parks and Recreation, the vulgar animated television show Rick and Morty, and the equally vulgar film Deadpool (2016).
Characters will turn to the camera and utter a few lines of commentary on their stories, or even just say a quick send-off. Sometimes they will even go as far as Rick from the aforementioned cartoon, saying “That was season one! Thanks for watching!” during their
finale.
But while we know of both modern and classical works that use this oddball choice, what brought about the idea of breaking this ‘wall’? Does it serve any function other than audience engagement, such as when a character speaks directly to the audience? Via research into the subject, I hope to shed more light onto this interesting literary and performative choice and why it is growing as a choice among artists of many different mediums.
Through this research, I hope to examine the following artistic implication: Is this “breaking the fourth wall”, a vital piece of contemporary drama, changing the distance between actor and audience member? By knowing the past of this artistic tool, with authors such as Andre Antoine and Bertolt Brecht, contemporary authors, directors, actors, and various other creative minds will be able to use this theatrical device to its fullest potential and perhaps find more innovative ways of implementing it in the future.