Plays with "fourth walls".... any help??!?!?

Question

The fourth wall is an invisible wall that is supposed to do an allusion, but I need help in finding the "fourth wall" in the major play, A Streetcar Named Desire.

Also the "willing of disbelief".... any people know what these two mean? and where they are presented in , A Streetcar Named Desire??????

PLEASE HELLLPPP!P!!!!

Answer 1

Sorry, I can't help you, because I don't really know what you're talking about.

I've always thought the fourth (invisible) wall referred to the theatre concept that there is an invisible wall between the actors and the audience. In other words, the set of a room may be built with three actual walls but the fourth wall is open so that the audience may view the scene taking place inside the room.

"4th & Wall," by the way, is the new album from West Indian Girl. There are some pretty good songs on there.

Answer 2

The fourth wall is like a window the audience looks through, in order to see the action of the play. In other words, the actors aren't playing to the audience; they're interacting with each other, as if the scene were happening in real life.

I have no idea what you mean by "do an allusion". Perhaps you mean that it provides the "illusion" that you're observing reality reality. The fourth wall is not "presented" in Streetcar. It's there all the way through the show. At no point does any actor break through the fourth wall by addressing the audience directly.

"Willing SUSPENSION of disbelief" is required for musical theatre, or any other play with an unbelievable premise or actions. The best example I can think of, off the top of my head, is "West Side Story". Everyone knows that gang members don't get together and do ballet numbers. But it's a musical, and unless the audience can suspend their disbelief that gang members can sing and dance up a storm, they won't be able to make it past the overture. So they willingly suspend their disbelief for a couple of hours, in order to become involved in the story.

But again, this is not "presented" in A Streetcar Named Desire. I've racked my brain and haven't been able to remember even one instance in this play where willing suspension of disbelief is necessary. Perhaps you have misread or misheard your homework assignment.

Answer 3

You got some pretty good answers. I'm not sure Streetcar ever breaks the fourth wall. If you have to identify it, the fourth wall could be the perspective of the audience- the audience *is* the fourth wall. So when a character breaks the fourth wall, he acknowledges the audience's existance with a remark, a look, something that interacts with the audience instead of the other characters on the stage.

I'd try to expand on the other definition of "willing suspension of disbelief," but 'tis been done aready.

Answer 4

The fourth wall is a theatrical convention based on the idea that most rooms are square or rectangular and that in order for the audience to be able to watch what is going on inside that room, one wall has to be "removed." An interior set is generally comprised of three walls, a back wall, and two side walls, usually slanting outwards a little to give more playing space. The fourth wall would be the one that runs parallel to the back wall in the interior stage set, but, again this wall has been removed. "Breaking the fourth wall" is when a character in a scene suddenly acknowledges that the audience is there looking in at them and turns and speaks directly to the audience.

There are several instances of Coleridge's "willing suspension of disbelief" evident in any play that you attend. When you go to see a play you are willing to suspend your impulse to say "Oh, that's not true" or "He's not really Oedipus; he's just some guy in my English class." For the two hours that you are in the theatre you have to believe that these people are who they say they are; you have to believe that a person's room probably does have 4 walls, but if all four were constructed on stage, you wouldn't be able to see any of the action in the room. You have to believe that one side of the satge is Romeo's house and the other side of the stage is Juliet's house when in reality, they are just two different sides of the same stage.

Answer 5

"Willing suspension of disbelief" is the phrase. Basically, the audience is willing to accept some implausible plot device for the sake of moving the story along. I won't tell you where it is in *that* play, but I will tell you this:

If you watch a movie, and you're paying attention, and afterwards realize "wow, that had plot holes you could drive a tank through, but I didn't notice", that's "willing suspecnsion of disbelief". If while watching the movie, you say to yourself "Yeah, *right*, like *that* would ever happen", you didn't suspend your disbelief. ;)

"fourth wall" is not so much "allusion" as a *direct* reference to the people watching the play - for instance, in many TV sitcoms, you'll see or hear a character addressing or narrating to the audience to fill them in - the show Scrubs does that a lot, as does almost every Woody Allen movie - my favorite, of course, has to be "I happen to have Marshall McLuhan here..."

Answer 6

The "fourth wall" is the audience. Remember they don't exist. They are the wall that is usually called the "fourth wall." As to your second question I have no clue.