The last century saw playwrights and filmmakers attempting to shatter the fourth wall. I'm sure most of us are familiar with this theatrical convention, but just in case, here's a refresher: Essentially the fourth wall, the invisible barrier of mere air that stands between audience and actor, is the line that separates reality from fiction. Woody Allen played around with this idea in The Purple Rose of Cairo. Mia Farrow plays a film-besotted, Depression era woman who's in love with a character in the movies. Poof! Suddenly he walks off the screen and into her arms. The result? According to Samuel Coleridge, this would shatter the tenous, unspoken agreement between reality and illusion. Coleridge claimed that to become truly engulfed in the world of drama we must "suspend our disbelief."

Never one leave audiences content, Bertolt Brecht (the king of experimental theatre) smashed the fourth wall just about any time he got the chance. He wanted to challenge audiences and push his art as far as he could. However the play that really defined this new approach to theatrical reality was Luigi Pirandello's Six Character in Search of An Author. (One can't help but wonder how Survivor fits into the big picture, but that's an argument for a later date.)

The title pretty much says it all. There are six characters abandoned on stage, looking desperately for an author to finish their stories. They want someone to define their lives. Give them a plot. They want lines. They want to know what they're doing. Sound like life? Six Characters in Search of An Author is more than merely an exercise in shattering theatrical conventions. It's an existential piece that feels as real now as it did way back in the 1920s. And the Shaw Festival has just mounted a production.

Director Tadeusz Bradecki has chosen a modern setting for the production. Translator Domenico Pietrapaolo updated the text, to include modern colloquialisms and current gizmos such as ringing cell phones. Kate Taylor of The Globe and Mail dislikes this approach to Pirandello's play and in fact slammed the production, however I say let's give Shaw's remounting a chance. As my brother, a Shakespearean actor, told me the other day: "I've had it with Canadian theatre reviewers. It's never about the power of the play or the valiant attempt of the company. It's all about how elegantly a critic can slam a production. This doesn't encourage people to see these rare mountings. It's just vicious vitriol."

Hmmmm. Food for thought. Have any of you ever seen this play? Any ideas about shattering the fourth wall? Write in with your theatrical observations. I'd love to hear them.