Breaking the “Fourth Wall.” Bocage, Citizen Actor
A major figure in French Romantic theater, the actor Bocage embodies the Romantic conception of the artist, endowed with a regenerative moral or social vocation. He illustrates in his own way a political practice of the relationships between stage and audience during the theatrical performance. He sometimes breaks the “fourth wall” by establishing a dialogue with the public, more often through the art of suggesting possible political applications of the fiction played to the contemporary world. Breaking the “fourth wall” is not, however, without risk for the actor in an era of police surveillance of theaters.