Convention of Modern Theatre
The presence of 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 comedic effect when this boundary is "broken", for example by an actor onstage speaking to the audience directly. This is common in childrens theatre, where a character can ask the children for help.
The acceptance of the transparency of the fourth wall is part of the suspension of disbelief between a fictional work and an audience, allowing them to enjoy the fiction as if they were observing real events. Although the critic Vincent Canby described it in 1987 as "that invisible screen that forever separates the audience from the stage," postmodern art forms frequently either do away with it entirely, or make use of various framing devices to manipulate it in order to emphasize or de-emphasize certain aspects of the production, according to the artistic desires of the work's creator.
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Famous quotes containing the words convention, modern and/or theatre:
“No convention gets to be a convention at all except by grace of a lot of clever and powerful people first inventing it, and then imposing it on others. You can be pretty sure, if you are strictly conventional, that you are following genius—a long way off. And unless you are a genius yourself, that is a good thing to do.”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)
“Most modern reproducers of life, even including the camera, really repudiate it. We gulp down evil, choke at good.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Mankind’s common instinct for reality ... has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. In heroism, we feel, life’s supreme mystery is hidden. We tolerate no one who has no capacity whatever for it in any direction. On the other hand, no matter what a man’s frailties otherwise may be, if he be willing to risk death, and still more if he suffer it heroically, in the service he has chosen, the fact consecrates him forever.”
—William James (1842–1910)