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THEATRE I UNIT 3: ACTING & DIRECTING THE FOURTH WALL The Fourth Wall: the space that separates a performer or performance from an audience; the conceptual barrier between any ctional work and its viewers or readers.
Most of the time, you only notice The Fourth Wall when someone breaks it. Imagine a play set in someones living room. The scenic designer wants to create the suggestion of a realistic interior, so she starts with a wall far upstage, away from the audience. She adds two additional walls, stage left and stage right, that come out towards the spectators. That makes a box with three walls, thus creating the desired illusion of a room. Now, most real-life roomslike the one youre probably sitting in noware rectangles with four walls. Our hypothetical stage set has only three, because how else would you see the performers?