What’s in a Name?

The fourth wall is a performance convention that describes the imaginary wall between an actor and an audience, made famous by Dennis Diderot, a French philosopher, critic and writer in 1758. Russian acting practitioner, Konstantin Stanislavski described it as: “the ability to behave as one would in private, despite, in actuality, being watched intently while doing so.” This directly translates to authenticity in today’s world of public speaking and leadership presence. The ability to be authentic in any professional space is one of the key pillars of modern leadership and forms the root of our work at 4th Wall Communications.

To break the fourth wall, is to speak directly to the audience outside of a performance. This device is used to provide more context to aid in the audience’s understanding. As speakers and communicators in the real and digital world, we are constantly breaking the fourth wall to address the audience, whether it is to pickup non verbal cues in order to adapt a presentation, or of course, speaking directly to them. Our audiences (customers, investors, clients and colleagues) provide us with some of our most valuable insights in building our skills as communicators, and a significant amount of our work at 4th Wall Communications is focused on this.