The FOURTH WALL is the invisible wall at the front of the stage 'through' which the audience watches the play unfold as though they were observing real events. The concept is presumed to have originated in nineteenth-century theatre with the advent of theatrical realism. The FOURTH WALL IS 'broken' when a character onstage directly addresses the audience and disrupts the fantasy. Bertolt Brecht was known for deliberately breaking the FOURTH WALL to unsettle his audience and force them to think more critically about what they were seeing.

What happens when a performing actor leaves behind his lines, staging, sets,and lighting, and steps beyond the 'fourth wall'? For four years, Amy Arbus has been exploring this question in a series of dramatic portraits of celebrated actors,both on and off Broadway. Fully costumed but stripped of their context, Arbus's actors remain fully in character as they venture outside the fictional setting of the play and the safety of the theater. Staged in anonymous public spaces, the images achieve an unexpected blend of spectacle and art; formality and spontaneity;performance and reality.

Collected in The Fourth Wall are some of the modern stage's most gifted actors,including Alan Cumming in Cabaret, John Malkovich in Lost Land, Liev Schreiber in Talk Radio, Ed Harris in Wrecks, Cherry Jones in Doubt, Christine Ebersole in Grey Gardens, and Ethan Hawke and Martha Plimpton in The Coast of Utopia.The book includes actors from such successful and ambitious shows as Wicked,The Light in the Piazza, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Color Purple, and Sweeney Todd to name a few. Photographs are accompanied by synopses of the plays and observations about the particular productions, as well as a selection of illuminating quotes from the actors portrayed.

In 2006's critically acclaimed book On the Street: I98o-x99o, Arbus focused her lens on those who dressed to express themselves now she turns her attention to those who dress to become someone else. The result is a collection of potent photographs that explores the notion of identity and pays remarkable tribute to contemporary theater and the performers who bring fantasies to life.