It's the result of an ongoing negotiation between the audience and the author, mediated by the performers and the reactions they obtain.
It's only broken successfully when both the author requests it and the audience permits it: we accept Stoppard's antics in The Real Inspector Hound because they reap rewards for us in terms of entertainment; we would expect and to some extent demand any plainer theatrical developments to stick within the established boundaries, and react against any "funny business."
Authors who do it too often run the risk of being considered clever rather than good.
In many cases the wall is necessary to prevent (or discourage) inappropriate interaction between audience and performers.
In others, such as stand-up comedy, the wall is much more porous and allows for heckling. Could someone stand on stage and say "The fourth wall - now you see it, now you don't - now you see it, now you don't" and switch it on and off just with their body language?
When it's there, it aids suspension of disbelief; it is a retaining wall that holds the conventions of theatre in.
I'm not sure the wall is there in the same way at all in standup. The comic is interacting directly with the audience, rather than with other members of the cast or with the scene, or just within his own material. And often the heckling goes both ways.
Agreed. And even when we saw Little Britain Live, which was essentially a sequence of scenes played out as if on TV, we were just waiting for something to break and for them to corpse, or fluff - because that was part of the fun.
It was inevitable that when Roy called "Margaret..." there would be an unspoken competition between the audience and the stage to see who would call out "Yes?" and how long each side would hold out. But that added to the fun, although in the other scenes we were passive observers again.
Surely with comedy, not just stand-up, part of it also is seeing how people react, yet this doesn't mean that the fourth wall is broken as we are only observing our fellow audience members.
And your Little Britain example reminds me of Rocky Horror and the many ways it interacts with the audience. The original stage production in an intimate venue, the actors so close you could smell their sweat; the safely sanitised film version the same every time, but with the Criminologist talking - to us? to some unseen audience? filming his evidence alone to send out to the world?. And then the film audience participation, and the revived stage show.
I don't believe it exists for children; they don't see it because it's not there. The whole concept is a thoughtgame between audience and author/performers, once the audience is old enough to appreciate metatextuality; there's no point having a fourth wall unless you can play with it, basically. When I was a kid, actors were these nice people who acted out stories, up on a stage so that we could all see them. Sometimes they spoke to us-the-audience and sometimes they spoke to each other (which was true whether they were doing panto or Hamlet), and there was no distinction: it was all one state of mind.
You can safely say that the fourth wall existed by the 1930s, when Brecht started writing stuff that breaks it ;) It seems likely that Shakespeare played with the properties of the fourth wall with his soliloquies (bearing in mind the fairly small, intimate, crowded playing spaces he wrote for). But stuff like Wilde presupposes a fourth wall, as in fact did Victorian theatre design with the proscenium arch. The curtain and the narrow run in front of it are definitely giving the impression of a wall here.
As lnr says above, I don't think there's a 4th wall there for stand-up.
As for children, I don't know. When I was little (say, 7 or younger) I saw pantomime, where there's lots of crossing of the 4th wall. I saw very few other types of play before I was in my teens, when I definitely had the concept of a 4th wall. Are we likely to get a different answer for those who grew up with TV, as opposed to those who grew up with radio/before the days of radio? I sort of assumed that the 4th wall was implicitly there, like with TV programs, and you just 'looked in' on the moment as it were. It was a revelation to me that actually, quite a lot of theatrical art is based on using that to your advantage, or showing it up as a convention etc. etc. As for who puts it there - it's both audience AND performers, coupled with the playing space which can either make it easy or difficult.
A Health and Safety Officer explains: The fourth wall is there for health and safety reasons. It prevents unseemly metaphors leaping off the stage into the audience's consciousness (assuming the audience is conscious), as per the Health and Safety (Taking Things too Bloody Literaly) Regulations 2007. The fourth wall, like the fire curtain, must be lowered at every performance.
A former art student and parent adds: the fourth wall is both erected and breached at a very early age now. The excellent Canadian animated series THE BACKYARDIGANS repeatedly contains lines that only make sense if the audience is joining with the characters in the joke such as "that certainly is convenient" when the deu ex machina appears, and works because the quality of the writing enables one to switch easily between modes of watching. Children's first experience of live performance is then most often a version or compliation of the stuff they've seen on Cbeebies and Nick Junior that compounds this. They don't necessarily understand intellectually but find the discontinuity very funny.
Also: you've appeared in various stuff at conventions)as have I). It is a necessary mental constuct when performing to enable one to stop thinking "Oh Shit! they're all watching me!"
I've never heard that term before - it was an interesting read.
I suppose it's that which breaks every time I watch TV and think "but that would never happen!" or spot a continuity error.
Maybe my fourth wall is very thin, as I find it hard to lose myself in fiction (except Casualty, notably) - that's a much better way of putting it than "I don't get on with made-up stories".
So I am assuming that the fourth wall is mine.
But also that it is broken by weak acting / thin plots, etc.
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The first time I saw through the fourth wall was when I saw the end of Blazing Saddles...
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It's only broken successfully when both the author requests it and the audience permits it: we accept Stoppard's antics in The Real Inspector Hound because they reap rewards for us in terms of entertainment; we would expect and to some extent demand any plainer theatrical developments to stick within the established boundaries, and react against any "funny business."
Authors who do it too often run the risk of being considered clever rather than good.
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In others, such as stand-up comedy, the wall is much more porous and allows for heckling. Could someone stand on stage and say "The fourth wall - now you see it, now you don't - now you see it, now you don't" and switch it on and off just with their body language?
When it's there, it aids suspension of disbelief; it is a retaining wall that holds the conventions of theatre in.
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It was inevitable that when Roy called "Margaret..." there would be an unspoken competition between the audience and the stage to see who would call out "Yes?" and how long each side would hold out. But that added to the fun, although in the other scenes we were passive observers again.
Surely with comedy, not just stand-up, part of it also is seeing how people react, yet this doesn't mean that the fourth wall is broken as we are only observing our fellow audience members.
Have I over-analysed this? ;-)
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Only just beginning :-)
And your Little Britain example reminds me of Rocky Horror and the many ways it interacts with the audience. The original stage production in an intimate venue, the actors so close you could smell their sweat; the safely sanitised film version the same every time, but with the Criminologist talking - to us? to some unseen audience? filming his evidence alone to send out to the world?. And then the film audience participation, and the revived stage show.
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As lnr says above, I don't think there's a 4th wall there for stand-up.
As for children, I don't know. When I was little (say, 7 or younger) I saw pantomime, where there's lots of crossing of the 4th wall. I saw very few other types of play before I was in my teens, when I definitely had the concept of a 4th wall. Are we likely to get a different answer for those who grew up with TV, as opposed to those who grew up with radio/before the days of radio? I sort of assumed that the 4th wall was implicitly there, like with TV programs, and you just 'looked in' on the moment as it were. It was a revelation to me that actually, quite a lot of theatrical art is based on using that to your advantage, or showing it up as a convention etc. etc. As for who puts it there - it's both audience AND performers, coupled with the playing space which can either make it easy or difficult.
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A former art student and parent adds: the fourth wall is both erected and breached at a very early age now. The excellent Canadian animated series THE BACKYARDIGANS repeatedly contains lines that only make sense if the audience is joining with the characters in the joke such as "that certainly is convenient" when the deu ex machina appears, and works because the quality of the writing enables one to switch easily between modes of watching. Children's first experience of live performance is then most often a version or compliation of the stuff they've seen on Cbeebies and Nick Junior that compounds this. They don't necessarily understand intellectually but find the discontinuity very funny.
Also: you've appeared in various stuff at conventions)as have I). It is a necessary mental constuct when performing to enable one to stop thinking "Oh Shit! they're all watching me!"
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I suppose it's that which breaks every time I watch TV and think "but that would never happen!" or spot a continuity error.
Maybe my fourth wall is very thin, as I find it hard to lose myself in fiction (except Casualty, notably) - that's a much better way of putting it than "I don't get on with made-up stories".
So I am assuming that the fourth wall is mine.
But also that it is broken by weak acting / thin plots, etc.
So perhaps it is more of a party wall.
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Deeep stuff Dude
When do children learn it. Between the ages of 4 & 6 .Suprisingly easily >Maybe its hardwired in