The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You / Theatre

Live theatre is especially prone to this trope, due to the audience being physically present in the same place as the actors. Can be combined with Audience Participation.

---

• A Mirror: At the very start of the play, the Registrar warns the audience that this is an unlicensed play and he knows the risk audience members are taking by attending. The Nested Story play is later paused due to worries that the Commission for Public Order (CPO) will raid the theatre. The play later ends abruptly when the CPO does raid the theatre. Armed CPO agents block doors and patrol the aisles. The audience is told that they'll be arrested and detained — "if you resist, we will shackle you. If you speak, we will silence you" — and then the lights go out.
• Open Circle's production in Seattle of Pickman's Model (by H. P. Lovecraft) abused the fourth wall when one actress screamed at the audience, "This person needs help! This is not part of the performance! Stop sitting there and somebody call for help!" Actually, yes, it was, it was just part of a performance inside a performance. Some audience members seized their cell phones in a moment of panic, while others just watched the performance continue.
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: "Sweeney waits in the parlor hall / Sweeney leans on the office wall / Nowhere to run, nothing can hide you / Isn't that Sweeney there beside you?"
  • They then point at the audience and accuse them of being just as depraved. The actor portraying Sweeney Todd may even enter and start singing from behind the audience!
  • During "Epiphany" Sweeney starts pointing at the audience and offering to give several members a 'shave'.
• Sondheim likes this trope. Both Into the Woods and Assassins feature the lesser version, with a group of characters turning on the omniscient narrator. Exaggerated in Into the Woods, when the narrator (who had been narrating the first act and the second act up till now) gets noticed by the characters in the story, and offered up as bait for the giantess that wants to kill them all, stating "he's not one of us", though he points out- reasonably enough- that if he dies, they’ll never know how the story ends. This is ultimately how the narrator dies — the giantess picks him up then simply drops him. Splat!
• Tanz Der Vampire includes several moments where vampires appear in the auditorium, with the audience. And the closing number is them essentially declaring that you're next, which would be pretty creepy if it weren't actually the upside of a Downer Ending.
• The Fortune Theatre's adaptation of The Woman in Black has a truly haunting example of this, after the audience has been terrified of The Woman for most of the show, The Actor asks who the real Kipp hired to play her, to which he replies "I hired no woman" shocking both in-universe and for the audience as her mere appearance causes tragedy.
• In The Phantom of the Opera before the performance of Don Juan Triumphant, the sounds of doors slamming and firemen shouting "Secure!" can be heard throughout the theater, as well as the Phantom drawling, "I'm here, the Phantom of the Opera. . ."
  • As well, the performance starts with the raising of the chandelier into the ceiling right above the audience in the stalls. At the end of the first act, it falls directly downwards towards the audience (though is obviously on a wire so it never hits them).
  • If the venue has seat-boxes like the one that the musical's eponymous Phantom demands be left empty, loudspeakers might be planted under the seats in the specific box that he demanded remain vacant, and in that case, you had better believe the venue's employees will not warn patrons seated there.
• At the end of Pippin, the Players try and convince people in the audience to come on stage and light themselves on fire in Pippin's place. In some productions they go into the house, and even succeed in getting people almost to the stage before the Leading Player steps in and stops them. But then again, there isn't much of a Fourth Wall in Pippin anyway.
• The Green Goblin battle, as well as other moments in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, feature actors flying and duking it out above the stalls, occasionally landing in the aisles or on balconies. In fact, most of the show's $75M budget went towards rennovating the theatre specifically to house the required flight systems and other technical elements.
• Little Shop of Horrors. At the very end, after Audrey is eaten, The Reveal of how Audrey II plans to take over the world by letting people grow more Audrey II's from leaf cuttings, and Seymour getting eaten trying to kill it, warnings are sung directly to the audience, and the plant puppet leans into the audience and the theatre finally goes dark after it opens wider than it ever previously did in the show and vines fall from the ceiling.
  Crystal, Chiffon and Ronette: The plants proceeded to grow, and GROW! And began what they came here to do, which was essentially too eat Cleveland, and Des Moines, and Peoria, and New York, AND THIS THEATRE! (alternatively) AND WHERE YOU LIVE! (or) AND YOU!
• At the end of the "Popular" number in Wicked, Glinda throws her wand offstage. On a few occasions, it has landed in the seating and narrowly missed audience members.
• One number in The Pirates of Penzance typically features a bit of ascended improv in which the Pirate King attacks the orchestra conductor, who fends him off.
• Justified in the No Fourth Wall world of Cirque du Soleil's Michael Jackson: ONE — the evil Tabloid Junkies harass arriving audience members during the preshow and zombies roam the theater during "Thriller".
• Henrik Ibsen used this trope once, in his 1864 play The Pretenders. The main Manipulative Bastard of the play returns to tempt the loser antagonist at the end of the play, telling him that he has one last offer for him. He also tells that the devil assigned him to "look after" Norway, and implies that he is still around - and that last one is aimed at the audience. He is there to assure that Norway screws up, it is his job, and he will do it.
• In the Swedish horror play Wärdshuset, the fourth wall does not ''exist"! The audience is lead into a hall and with a clear cue the play starts as if it's a conversation between the employees. As the play goes on and the behaviour of the actors become more and more unsettling the actors lead the audience into a smaller room with a square of chairs to sit in. The room is completely dark. The play continues but with no light except a flashlight and a lighter and the room is filled with Silent Hill-esque monsters that touch the audience. When the play "ends" the audience is lead out by the villain into the hall which is dark and filled with the monsters and is simply lead out. The whole play is played as if it was happening and the audience just ended up there by accident.
• A cheeky variation comes in the 2013 West End musical Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in that the "threat" to the audience is Willy Wonka, Ambiguously Evil Trickster extraordinaire, who reveals himself to also be a Master of Disguise in the final scene and explains to the audience "There comes a time to leave the past behind you/And amongst you is as good a place to hide/So out there in the shadows I remind you/That may be Willy Wonka by your side!"
• At the climax of Matilda, after the students purposely fail the spelling test, the Trunchbull imprisons them in a mass Chokey consisting of a grid of green lasers that extend into the audience.
• In some productions of the Broadway musical for The Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch will actually come into a corner of the auditorium near the front, and seems to address nearby seated audience members.
• In the Hardin County Performing Arts Center's rendition of Nineteen Eighty-Four, there were CCTV screens showing surveillance footage of the audience. Also, if audience members were to look behind them, they would see a screen with Big Brother's eyes, watching them.
• Assassins: The Balladeer gets attacked by the assassins. And, at the end of the play, the assassins point their guns at the audience and fire.
• In Japanese Noh Theatre, scene transitions were performed by stagehands dressed completely in black. They were supposed to be "invisible;" the audience was just supposed to pretend they weren't there, and that scenes were changing on their own. So when a play called for a ninja, whose mastery of stealth and psychological warfare were rumored to be damned near supernatural, they would often cast them as one of these stagehands. It would be all the more shocking and terrifying for an audience to have one of these "invisible" people suddenly step forward, assassinate a member of the cast, and then just fade back into the scenery. This is actually the origin of the ninja "costume" in popular culture, since a ninja, being a master of stealth, actually wouldn't wear a clearly recognizable outfit...
• The now-classic 2019 school play recreation of Alien by North Bergen High School featured the full-grown Xenomorph making its debut behind the audience and roaring, then moving down the aisle.
• The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals ends with the female lead surrounded by legions of the musical hive mind, who have all but already won. It's only afterwards that she realizes the audience is there too, and begins begging and screaming for their help. Of course, it's all but futile now and by the very end, the singing zombies make one final lunge for her and the audience. Made worse in the digital version, where they lunge directly at the camera. If Emma can become self-aware, what makes you think they can't?
  • A lesser example occurs in it's Stealth Sequel Black Friday where one of the main villains politely asks an audience member to hold a prop for them. Sure, it's less frightening, but THINK OF THE IMPLICATIONS!
• Beetlejuice: During his opening number, the titular Ghost with the Most threatens to kill any audience member who has their cell phone ringing during the performance. It's all Played for Laughs though.
• The Reduced Shakespeare Company's Millennium Musical potrays the Apollo rocket by having the cast squirting super-soakers at the front rows. When the astronauts step out onto the lunar surface, this is represented by walking into the audience "to get the people who think they're safe at the back".
• Live stage shows for Pretty Cure typically start with one of the villains from the season that's currently airing appearing, speaking directly to the audience, and threatening to attack them. The Cures then arrive and fight the villain off.
  • In this stage show for Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash★Star, things are taken a step further when Cure Bloom and Cure Egret first appear outside of the stage area and enter through the crowd.