The Proscenium stage form is one of the most common forms in our repertoire. It dates back to Italy in the Renaissance. It depends on a linear division between audience and performers. The division is further emphasized by the use of a Proscenium Arch designed to serve as a Fourth Wall. The idea here is that action has begun long before the audience enters the space and will continue beyond the end of the play. What the audience is really doing by this scheme is eavesdropping right through the walls of the living space as though they are glass.
Those inside the space are unaware of the observer. Modern interpretation allows an ironical use of the form by purposefully denying this illusion of anonymous observation by Breaking Proscenium or Breaking the fourth wall. This comes in two forms. Physically, the actor need only step through the plane of the proscenium to shatter the illusion of the proscenium as the fourth wall. He or she may also break the illusion through direct acknowledgement of the audience. Shakespeare used this technique in his soliloquies.
The strategy is particularly striking when employed in film or television where separation of actor and audience is no matter of illusion. Common examples of breaking the fourth wall in TV and films include: The Gary S handling Show, Ferris Beular’s Day off, and even the classic George Burns Show. The Proscenium arrangement is a linear one with actors on one side of the space, and audience on the other. But the actor space itself best supports linear movement and composition. The use of portals or leg and teaser arrangements causes the space to be divided into alley ways. Decorative drops may be flown in to cut the space off at any of these alleyways.
The Essay on How important is performance space to performance?
The question of performance space’s importance in conveying meaning and guiding audience response is complicated. First we must define the term “performance space”. In a broader sense, it can refer to venue, which in the case of site-specific artists such as Shunt, means performance space is indeed central to the construction and context of meaning. Venues also come with their ...
Commonly a drop might fly in down stage for a short scene in the space remaining while a larger scene could be set up behind. In this mode layers of scenery could be revealed successively with no need to stop for scene changes. This style of staging was especially popular in Vaudeville and Musical Theater Productions. These short scenes played downstage to cover the upstage set change were called In One Scenes since they were in fact played In One. You see in this form each of the “alleys” formed by the masking or portals was numbered working from the proscenium upstage. So, an In One scene was played in the first set of wings.
In Vaudeville, In One scenes were dominated by solo singers and comedians. In the musical Peter Pan, the large scene change from Neverland to The Home Underground is covered by the song I won’t Grow Up. At the end of the song the In One Drop rises and voila we are in a different world.
