proscenium arch

plural proscenium arches

1. architectureThe arch that frames a theater stage, and separates it from the auditorium.

   I started using filmic grammar, rather than traditional proscenium arch grammar, because I worked in the round primarily.

   2025 December 27, Sarah Hemming, quoting Alan Ayckbourn, “‘I betrayed the audience’”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 12

   1 more example

   The arts have traditionally employed devices that seem designed to assist the spectator in lifting the occasion out of any practical context and placing it in a special, autonomous space of its own. The pedestal and the stage raise sculpture and theatre above the plane of ordinary life, the frame and the proscenium arch separate art and performances from their surroundings, special halls for the visual arts and for music provide what the cathedral does for religious worship, a sanctified space removed from the concerns of daily life.

   1994 July, Arnold Berleant, “Beyond Disinterestedness”, in British Journal of Aesthetics, XXXIV:iii, page 247