Breaking Various Walls

Comedy often breaks the 4th wall - and recently I wrote a sketch to be performed on stage where I attempted to break the 4th wall, even though it is a live show directed at the audience. I did this by steping outside of the show as a whole, including the audience sitting there watching it.

Anyway - the festival this sketch is intended for has a theme this year of "The Art of Looking Sideways" so, logically, if I want to break the 4th wall but in a looking sideways fashion, I should actually be trying to break the 3rd wall.

But I'm buggered if I can think of a way of doing so.

Any ideas?

Well if you look at the phrase 'the forth wall', the forth wall is where the audience is, the other three walls make up the set (actually the set only consists of walls if it is a box set) so the only way to destroy another wall would be literally to do so.

The Blazing Saddles finale (kind of) breaks the third wall.

Maybe your characters can similarly step into a new audience and acknowledge their fictionality there!

Try building a fourth wall.
Or possibly planting a leyllandii hedge.
Then you can do what the f**k you like.

Actually I quite like the point JohnnyD makes. Blazing Saddles does do something rather odd and I like odd. that's sort of what I was aiming for.

Perhaps pulling the audience more into participation with the show and using them to burst the show out of the venue to unsuspecting passers-by could be 'breaking the third wall'.

Or maybe that's the fifth wall.

Quote: Afinkawan @ July 1 2010, 9:42 AM BST

Perhaps pulling the audience more into participation with the show and using them to burst the show out of the venue

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Steve Martin once, during his act, jumped off stage and said 'follow me!'; the audience did, outside he found an empty swimming pool, got them to climb inside then 'swam' across them.

I'm not sure there is a fourth wall in stand up since the comedian talks to the audience anyway.

The big fourth wall breakers in TV comedy have to be The Gary Shandling Show and, the British copy, Sean's Show.

Quote: chipolata @ July 1 2010, 9:50 AM BST

I'm not sure there is a fourth wall in stand up since the comedian talks to the audience anyway.

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Sorry, I appear to have erroneously given the impression that I'm looking for actual logic. Won't happen again.

If it helps I have no idea specifically what you are talking about Afinkawan Can you give us an example of what you are doing with the third wall etc, or more details about the sketch?

And there was Tom Stoppard's play The Real Inspector Hound, in which two theatre critics get drawn into the murder mystery. It read very well and worked fine in my mind, but the two productions I saw of it were lame. (I never saw the original with Ronnie Barker and Richard Briers as the critics.)

Quote: Marc P @ July 1 2010, 11:58 AM BST

If it helps I have no idea specifically what you are talking about Afinkawan Can you give us an example of what you are doing with the third wall etc, or more details about the sketch?

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Well the sketch itself involves fake DVD commentary while the show is going on, including commentary on the audience and their reaction to the show as it happens, effectively pulling the audience inside the fourth wall and then breaking it by opening the whole thing up to another, entirely fictional audience outside the venue.

I know that's all waffle - I'm not an art student or anything so I don't mean anything by it. It's just that, due to limitations of the venue the brief was to write sketches 'with no 4th wall stuff' - presented straight to the audience. A bunch of people acting out a sketch as if it were a play just wouldn't work in that venue.

But me, being me and told 'no 4th wall stuff' I have to work out a way of doing what they've asked for while rebelling against the instruction.

This led me to try to break the fourth wall anyway and then, as the theme of the festival is 'The Art of Looking Sideways' it made me consider how to break the fourth wall looking sideways, which led me to wonder how on earth I'd go about breaking a 3rd wall instead. Which led me to asking you fine people if you had any ideas how such a thing might be achieved, just out of interest really.

I doubt any of it actually makes sense, it's just the stubborn smartarse streak in me.

Do an Andy Kaufman and challenge an audience member to fight. If the fourth wall doesn't get broken, at least your nose might.

Cheers.

Set off the fire alarm and finish the set in the car park.

Instead of breaking a wall, do a sketch which just involves building a real fourth wall on the front of the stage. Get the audience to help, creating a paradox.

SlagA rushes off to check whether Yoko Ono has beaten him to this already.

Quote: SlagA @ July 4 2010, 10:15 AM BST

Instead of breaking a wall, do a sketch which just involves building a real fourth wall on the front of the stage. Get the audience to help, creating a paradox.

SlagA rushes off to check whether Yoko Ono has beaten him to this already.

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