When a performing actor leaves behind his lines, staging, sets, and lighting, and steps beyond the 'fourth wall', the unexpected happens. For the past four years, Amy Arbus has been creating a series of riveting portraits of celebrated actors both on and off Broadway including Liev Schreiber in
Talk Radio, Ed Harris in
Wrecks, Alan Cumming in
Cabaret, Cherry Jones in
Doubt, Christine Ebersole in
Grey Gardens, and Ethan Hawke and Martha Plimpton in
The Coast of Utopia. Because the photographs in her book,
The Fourth Wall, were staged in anonymous public places they explore the question of identity by capturing both the actor and the fictional character with a surprising mixture of spectacle and art, formality and spontaneity, and performance and reality.