The Fourth Wall

I fucking hate the theatre. There, I’ve said it. It’s almost like a taboo subject among my friends, hating the theatre. It seems like whenever I ask, especially ladies or parents, about whether they like the theatre they will immediately reply with enthusiasm “oh yessss, I just love theatre!” When I ask them what it is exactly that they like about it, the highlight seems to be the little tubs of ice cream in the interval.

What do people actually do in the theatre? Does anybody actually care about what’s on stage? I’ve had pleasant experiences in West End theatres, but when I think about why it’s usually because I’ve finally sat down and not had to talk to anybody for an hour or two. I enjoy sitting there quietly contemplating life, but it very rarely has anything to do with what’s happening on stage. I wonder if I’d achieve the same results by sitting in a warm darkened room on a tilting chair, looking at a blank wall through a pair of binoculars, and then eating a scoop of ice cream with a spatula. Perhaps I could burn a £50 note at the end of it just to complete the process.

I’m going to make a broad uneducated assumption here; I reckon most people going to see a play couldn’t care two hoots about the characters in it or the story that happens around them, and definitely aren’t altered by what they see.

But why is this? Theatre used to be important. It was originally seen as a practice ground for real life – the audience would literally see themselves on stage, and could experience genuine emotions in a safe place. In tribal theatre Shamans would enter a trance like state of visions and return with stories that would heal whole communities, and inspire the audience into new real-life adventures.

But now we seem stuck with some kind of over-intellectualized display of actors, who don’t even understand the words they are saying, and a mindless obsession with Shakespeare and boring plays. Rather than just being one type of theatre this has become ‘The Theatre’, and cemented itself firmly behind the fourth wall.

Street acts amaze and dumbfound me every time I see them, even the bad ones. The best act I ever saw was a bloke called Jonathan Kay running across a field in Glastonbury while 40 passer-bys chased after him pretending to be Emus. Why isn’t this ‘The Theatre?’

So perhaps I don’t hate theatre, in fact I love it – I just hate ‘The Theatre’.

I say fuck the fourth wall. Theatre producers have failed to realize that there is already a medium that excels at entertainment from behind the fourth wall – it’s called the television.

I can quite happily masturbate in front of flat screen fourth wall of my television without affecting the performance of the actors in Hollyoaks. Unfortunately it probably wouldn’t affect the performance in plays either, although a mobile phone going off would be a different story.

Theatre seems to have turned into a shit version of television for people to go to when they want to do something different from watching television. It’s even started to attract actors from television who turn up to do a two week run in the West End and wank over the audience and drama school graduates before fucking off to a hotel to tell some wide eyed butt kissing shit head journalist about how they are ‘supporting’ theatre.

So fuck the fourth wall. If you’re going to go to the trouble of having real life actors on stage I want to smell them. I want big hairy smelly actors brushing past me on the way to the stage. Perhaps they could even punch me in the face before the interval just so I know I’m alive.

But I don’t want some kind of contrived ‘audience interaction’ where some hapless sap gets pulled up on stage to look like a gormless contestant on the Generation Game. I just mean that maybe theatre should mean more, should be about us, should affect us, should actually be influenced by who we are, instead of just mindlessly broadcasting what it thinks we should like.

I can quite happily masturbate in front of flat screen fourth wall of my television

If you leave a play thinking ‘it was above you’, then don’t. If you don’t understand a play it’s the playwright’s fault, he’s done a shit job, he hasn’t spoken to you because he’s probably stuck too far up his own arse. Go to his house, tell him he’s a c***, and ask for your £50 back.

But hang on, this is a bit negative isn’t it? What do I like? I like lots of things. I like watching good stand up comedians; I even like watching shit stand up comedians. I find it amazing that one guy can write, direct and perform in his own show all by himself and sell more tickets and get more genuine reaction from an audience than a cast of 30 all singing all dancing morons. Why is that? Why don’t we regard stand up comedy as ‘The Theatre?’

I also like some improvisation. There’s a group from London called Showstoppers and another from LA called One Night Stand that make up more compelling, funny, entertaining and meaningful musicals on the spot in one hour than if Andrew Lloyd Webber had his cock in a vice. Why aren’t they in the West End, why isn’t this ‘The Theatre?’