The first play I attended was in a school hall. I was very young, but I remember the sight of the players, mostly children, pressing their faces against the stage curtain to get a glimpse of the audience, and a boy in the front row slapping their noses. I am unsure whether this was a ‘breaking the fourth wall’ moment, but the scene has always stayed with me.
Children love the dramatic, and have more or less mastered the art of performance ab initio. There is a desire to play out something within their everyday lives and express what is true, good, joyful or tragic. It runs quite deep in the heart, for some of them, to deliver moving speeches for offended justice. We hear calls for the right punishment, normally of sinful siblings, and who could not be moved? I have never doubted that many good barristers and lawyers would also have made decent actors. You can spot a great orator, no doubt, from a young age; I am sure Cicero got his sister into all kinds of trouble.
