History ShowWithinAShow / Theater

!!Examples of type 1 (characters involved in production)

* Shakespeare's work contains quite a bit of meta musing on theater, which takes the form of Show Within A Show several times.
** ''The Murder of Gonzago'' in ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'', which overlaps with type 4 (a bit more about it there).
** The play staged by fairy spirits by Prospero for his guests in ''Theatre/TheTempest''.
** The ''Pyramus and Thisbe'' play rehearsed during ''Theatre/AMidsummerNightsDream'' and performed at the end.
** The entire play of ''Theatre/TheTamingOfTheShrew'' -- the story about a man who marries a shrewish woman and tames her -- is actually a "play within a play". The play opens with a framing scene in which actors are summoned to put on a play. (Once the inner play starts, the framing device is never referred to again.)
* Act 4 of Thomas Kyd's ''Theatre/TheSpanishTragedy'' involves a performance of a play, during which two of the actors take murderous revenge on the other two using [[NotSoFakePropWeapon Not So Fake Prop Weapons]].
* Several of Thornton Wilder's best-known plays are meta-examples, where the show is framed as actors (who therefore are themselves fictional characters) in a performance. ''Theater/TheSkinOfOurTeeth'' is particularly rife with moments of this.
* The play (and later movie) ''Deathtrap'' centers around a fictional play of the same name.
* In Pedro Muñoz Seca's theater play ''Don Mendo's Revenge'', exiled Don Mendo reappears in disguise with a troupe and manages a play-in-play reflecting his own, wrongful punishment; some of the people who had wronged him recognize themselves, ''Hamlet''-style.
* ''Hannibal'', ''Il Muto'', and ''Don Juan Triumphant'' in Creator/AndrewLloydWebber's ''Theatre/ThePhantomOfTheOpera''.
* ''La Princesse Zenobia'' and ''Slaughter on Tenth Avenue'' in ''On Your Toes''.
* ''The Small House of Uncle Thomas'' in ''The King And I''.
* A musical adaptation of ''The Taming of the Shrew'' is the show-within-a-show for ''Theatre/KissMeKate''.
* Adelaide works at the Hotbox in ''Theatre/GuysAndDolls''; "A Bushel and a Peck" and "Take Back Your Mink" are actually her performances there.
* ''Theatre/{{Cabaret}}'' is set almost completely at the Kit Kat Club, a seedy cabaret in Berlin. In the film, all the songs except "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" are performances at the Kit Kat Club; in the original play, "Wilkommen", "Don't Tell Mama", "Two Ladies", "Sitting Pretty" (or in later productions, "Money Money"), "If You Could See her", and "Cabaret" are, while the rest of the songs are not.
* Lucy's nightclub act in ''Theatre/JekyllAndHyde''.
* Several characters in ''Theatre/VictorVictoria'' (both the stage version and the original film, which wasn't an all-out musical).
* ''Theatre/TheDrowsyChaperone''. The [[TheNarrator Man in Chair]] does a significant amount of LampshadeHanging, though.
* ''Me and Juliet'': the show within a show is also called ''Me and Juliet''.
* ''Theatre/FortySecondStreet''
* The abysmally bad ''SpringtimeForHitler'' is the entire foundation of ''Film/TheProducers''.
* ''Theatre/NoisesOff'' is a 3-act play about a traveling production of a British comedy called ''Nothing On''. Each act is the same show at different points in the show's run. This type of show is also known as a ''backstage comedy''.
* Opera within an opera: Richard Strauss's ''Ariadne auf Naxos'', in its first act, has "the richest man in Vienna" commissioning two after-dinner entertainments: a serious, dramatic opera, and a light musical comedy. Shortly before the first is about to begin, the majordomo arrives and informs the two companies that their sponsor has changed his mind: the two are to be performed simultaneously. The second act is the resulting production.
* Louis Nowra's ''Theatre/{{Cosi}}'' is a play (and subsequent film) involving the members of a mental asylum rehearsing and (in the final act) performing Mozart's ''Theatre/CosiFanTutte''.
* Anthony Shaffer's play ''Whodunnit'' opens it as a bad/obviously satirical parody of an Creator/AgathaChristie type mystery (it seems to draw from Christie's ''Cards on the Table''), before revealing that it's actually a play being put on by the characters, who are often very different from their "stage roles".
* ''Theatre/MaratSade'' is about a group of inmates doing a play.
* ''Theatre/ManOfLaMancha'' is roughly about a bunch of prisoners performing a play for their own amusement. The production focuses on two storylines: Don Quixote's misadventures, and the "reality" that Miguel Cervantes goes through in prison.
* Konstanin's play in ''Theatre/TheSeagull''.
* Vanya's play in Christopher Durang's "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike" is a homage to The Seagull. Its' a [[StylisticSuck hysterically bad]] story of TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt from the point of view of a molecule who's also a TV weather person. It also has some parallels with the play itself. Sonia and Vanya discuss what they miss from their old life as themselves (Sonia misses, "her self pity. It was fun.") and it mentions motifs of the blue heron and [[RunningGag the wild turkey]].
* ''Theatre/TheCompleteHistoryOfAmericaAbridged'' has several shows within the show spoofing various time periods:
** Lewis and Clark do a corny vaudeville act.
** The golden age of RadioDrama is represented by ''Dodge Rambler, Boy Buckaroo'', which partway through changes over to ''Rock Fury, Super GI''.
** The second half of the twentieth century is done as a FilmNoir parody.
* The entirety of ''Theatre/{{Pippin}}'' is this, [[spoiler:leading up to most of the cast urging the actor playing the titular role to undergo SelfImmolation]].
* ''Theatre/ThePlayThatGoesWrong'' is about an amateur dramatic company attempting to stage a play ''The Murder at Haversham Manor'' which [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin goes more and more spectacularly wrong as the production goes on]].
----

!!Examples of type 2 (characters are fans)

* ''Wiz-O-Mania'' in ''Theatre/{{Wicked}}''.
* ''Theatre/TheDrowsyChaperone''. Man in Chair is listening to a record of the show.
** The SugarWiki/{{Funny|Moments}} comes when he puts on the record for Act II, and it turns out to be the record for an ''entirely different show.''

----

!!Examples of type 3 (SWAS is plot point)

* ''Stage Blood'' by Charles Ludlam is a little bit extreme in this. The whole plot is an adaptation of Hamlet that takes place during a production of Hamlet, while another show (an experimental play written by one of the characters) is performed in place of The Mousetrap Scene.
* ''Theatre/CyranoDeBergerac'' -- "''The Clorise''", the play presented at the Hotel de Bourgougne in the first act, is a real play (that gets interrumpted at the third line by the protagonist!). The first act is titled "A Representation at the Hotel de Bourgogne", where actors are playing ''The Clorise''. The Hotel de Bourgogne was the oldest and most famous stage in Paris during that time and ''The Clorise'' was a real play written by Balthazar Baro, a real author of the time ''Cyrano de Bergerac'' is settled on. Balthazar Baro's theatrical output includes the innovative play ''Célinde'' (1628), which makes imaginative use of the play-within-the-play, as Edmund Rostand, [[ShownTheirWork a french theatre scholar himself, was aware]]. So the play within a play is a real play that was popular in his time, but now is obscure at the very least. Is even lampshaded (and mocked) by this dialogue:
-->ACT I, SCENE I:\\
'''The young man:''' ''(to his father)'' What piece do they give us?\\
'''The Burgher:''' ''The Clorise''.\\
'''The young man:''' Who may the author be?\\
'''The Burgher:''' Master Balthazar Baro. It is a play and a half!...
* ''Theatre/NixonInChina'', where in act II Nixon, his wife, and Henry Kissinger attend a ballet and sing the opinions of the ballet dancers in a manner highly suggestive of a strawman of their own views. Based on an actual ballet staged by Chairman Mao's wife, who yells at the dancers en scene when they mess up.
* ''Theatre/TheDrowsyChaperone'', again. Man in Chair mentions that his mother gave him the record before his father left him. "He didn't leave because of the record, although I'm sure it didn't help."
* ''Theatre/TheRealInspectorHound'' is a play about two theatre critics watching a play. The play enters serious MindScrew territory when the lines between the 'inner' play and the 'outer' play are blurred, though. Moon and Birdboot inadvertently become part of the play in the third act, whilst the characters they replace then take their places in the audience and critique them.
* ''Theatre/TitleOfShow'' tells the story of how its characters create a musical, which happens to be ''Theatre/TitleOfShow'' itself.
** Jeff and Hunter are also shown shooting the first episode of their real life Website/YouTube series WebVideo/TheTitleOfShowShow, the success of which helps them gain the support to bring ''Theatre/TitleOfShow'' to Broadway.

----

!!Examples of type 4 (PlotParallel)

* ''The Murder of Gonzago'' in ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'' is performed because it mirrors the suspected crime of Claudius. Hamlet organizes the performance to see how he reacts. The quality of the writing (and, in most competent performances of ''Hamlet'', the acting) in ''The Murder'' is [[StylisticSuck much less naturalistic]] than that of the "outer play", to the point of seeming truly stilted to modern audiences. But there's a genius even in the wince-worthy lines: it's a remarkably spot-on imitation of the writing style of the pre-Renaissance morality plays put on by that type of strolling players.
* Taken to extremes in ''Theatre/RosencrantzAndGuildensternAreDead'', which makes ''Gonzago'' even closer to the plot of ''Hamlet'', including the deaths of two old friends of the young prince, which in the outer play [[{{Foreshadowing}} hasn't happened yet]]. Ros and Guil recognise there's something familiar about the situation, but don't make the connection. In ''Rosencrantz and Guildenstern'', ''Gonzago'' even has [[RecursiveReality a play within a play]]!
* Canio, protagonist in Leoncavallo's opera ''Theatre/{{Pagliacci}}'' and a commedia dell'arte actor, resolves not to submit to the same fate as his show-within-show character Pagliacci: Canio will not allow himself to be cuckolded and humiliated, and the end, he brings on stage his revenge against his wife and her lover.
* ''A Chorus Of Disapproval'' by Alan Ayckborn is about a production of Theatre/TheBeggarsOpera where the actor playing Macheath ends up in the same love triangle with the actresses offstage as their characters have on stage.
----

* Act 4 of Thomas Kyd's ''Theatre/TheSpanishTragedy'' involves a performance of a play, during which two of the actors take murderous revenge on the other two using NotSoFakePropWeapons.

** The CrowningMomentOfFunny comes when he puts on the record for Act II, and it turns out to be the record for an ''entirely different show.''

* TitleOfShow tells the story of how its characters create a musical, which happens to be TitleOfShow itself.
** Jeff and Hunter are also shown shooting the first episode of their real life YouTube series WebVideo/TheTitleOfShowShow, the success of which helps them gain the support to bring TitleOfShow to Broadway.

* ''A Chorus Of Disapproval'' by Alan Ayckborn is about a production of TheBeggarsOpera where the actor playing Macheath ends up in the same love triangle with the actresses offstage as their characters have on stage.

* Louis Nowra's Cosi is a play (and subsequent film) involving the members of a mental asylum rehearsing and (in the final act) performing Mozart's CosiFanTutte.

* ''Theatre/ThePlayGoesWrong'' is about an amateur dramatic company attempting to stage a play ''The Murder at Haversham Manor'' which [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin goes more and more spectacularly wrong as the production goes on]].

** The entire play of ''Theatre/TheTamingOfTheShrew''--the story about a man who marries a shrewish woman and tames her--is actually a "play within a play". The play opens with a framing scene in which actors are summoned to put on a play. (Once the inner play starts, the framing device is never referred to again.)

* ''Theatre/{{Cabaret}}'' is set almost completely at the Kit Kat Club, a seedy cabaret in Berlin: in the film, all the songs except "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" are performances at the Kit Kat Club, in the original play, "Wilkommen" "Don't Tell Mama", "Two Ladies", "Sitting Pretty" (or in later productions, "Money Money"), "If You Could See her", and "Cabaret" are, while the rest of the songs are not.

* ''Hannibal'', ''Il Muto'', and ''Don Juan Triumphant'' in AndrewLloydWebber's ''Theatre/ThePhantomOfTheOpera''.

* ''{{Cabaret}}'' is set almost completely at the Kit Kat Club, a seedy cabaret in Berlin: in the film, all the songs except "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" are performances at the Kit Kat Club, in the original play, "Wilkommen" "Don't Tell Mama", "Two Ladies", "Sitting Pretty" (or in later productions, "Money Money"), "If You Could See her", and "Cabaret" are, while the rest of the songs are not.

* Several characters in ''VictorVictoria'' (both the stage version and the original film, which wasn't an all-out musical).

* ''[[FortySecondStreet 42nd Street]]''

* ''The Murder of Gonzago'' in ''{{Hamlet}}'' is performed because it mirrors the suspected crime of Claudius. Hamlet organizes the performance to see how he reacts. The quality of the writing (and, in most competent performances of ''Hamlet'', the acting) in ''The Murder'' is [[StylisticSuck much less naturalistic]] than that of the "outer play", to the point of seeming truly stilted to modern audiences. But there's a genius even in the wince-worthy lines: it's a remarkably spot-on imitation of the writing style of the pre-Renaissance morality plays put on by that type of strolling players.
** Taken to extremes in ''RosencrantzAndGuildensternAreDead'', which makes ''Gonzago'' even closer to the plot of ''Hamlet'', including the deaths of two old friends of the young prince, which in the outer play [[{{Foreshadowing}} hasn't happened yet]]. Ros and Guil recognise there's something familiar about the situation, but don't make the connection. In ''Rosencrantz and Guildenstern'', ''Gonzago'' even has [[RecursiveReality a play within a play]]!
* Canio, protagonist in Leoncavallo's opera ''{{Pagliacci}}'' and a commedia dell'arte actor, resolves not to submit to the same fate as his show-within-show character Pagliacci: Canio will not allow himself to be cuckolded and humiliated, and the end, he brings on stage his revenge against his wife and her lover.

* ''The Taming of the Shrew'' is the show-within-a-show for ''Theatre/KissMeKate''.

** ''The Murder of Gonzago'' in ''{{Hamlet}}'', which overlaps with type 4 (a bit more about it there).

** The play at the end of ''AMidsummerNightsDream''.

* Konstanin's play in Checkov's, "The Seagull"
* Vanya's play in Christopher Durang's "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike" is a homage to The Seagull. Its' a [[StylisticSuck hysterically bad]] story of TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt from the point of view of a molecule who's also a TV weather person. It also has some parallels with the play itself. Sonia and Vanya discuss what they miss from their old life as themselves (Sonia misses, "her self pity. It was fun.") and it mentions motifs of the blue heron and [[RunningGag the wild turkey]].

* Theatre/TheDrowsyChaperone. Man in Chair is listening to a record of the show.

* ''CyranoDeBergerac'' -- "''The Clorise''", the play presented at the Hotel de Bourgougne in the first act, is a real play (that gets interrumpted at the third line by the protagonist!). The first act is titled "A Representation at the Hotel de Bourgogne", where actors are playing ''The Clorise''. The Hotel de Bourgogne was the oldest and most famous stage in Paris during that time and ''The Clorise'' was a real play written by Balthazar Baro, a real author of the time ''Cyrano de Bergerac'' is settled on. Balthazar Baro's theatrical output includes the innovative play ''Célinde'' (1628), which makes imaginative use of the play-within-the-play, as Edmund Rostand, [[ShownTheirWork a french theatre scholar himself, was aware]]. So the play within a play is a real play that was popular in his time, but now is obscure at the very least. Is even lampshaded (and mocked) by this dialogue:

* ''NixonInChina'', where in act II Nixon, his wife, and Henry Kissinger attend a ballet and sing the opinions of the ballet dancers in a manner highly suggestive of a strawman of their own views. Based on an actual ballet staged by Chairman Mao's wife, who yells at the dancers en scene when they mess up.
* Theatre/TheDrowsyChaperone, again. Man in Chair mentions that his mother gave him the record before his father left him. "He didn't leave because of the record, although I'm sure it didn't help."

* ''ManOfLaMancha'' is roughly about a bunch of prisoners performing a play for their own amusement. The production focuses on two storylines: Don Quixote's misadventures, and the "reality" that Miguel Cervantes goes through in prison.

* Adelaide works at the Hotbox in ''GuysAndDolls''; "A Bushel and a Peck" and "Take Back Your Mink" are actually her performances there.

* ''TheDrowsyChaperone''. The [[TheNarrator Man in Chair]] does a significant amount of LampshadeHanging, though.

* TheDrowsyChaperone. Man in Chair is listening to a record of the show.

* TheDrowsyChaperone, again. Man in Chair mentions that his mother gave him the record before his father left him. "He didn't leave because of the record, although I'm sure it didn't help."

* ''Hannibal'', ''Il Muto'', and ''Don Juan Triumphant'' in AndrewLloydWebber's ''ThePhantomOfTheOpera''.

** Jeff and Hunter are also shown shooting the first episode of their real life YouTube series TheTitleOfShowShow, the success of which helps them gain the support to bring TitleOfShow to Broadway.

** Taken to extremes in ''RosencrantzAndGuildensternAreDead'', which makes ''Gonzago'' even closer to the plot of ''Hamlet'', including the deaths of two old friends of the young prince, which in the outer play [[{{Foreshadowing}} hasn't happened yet]]. Ros and Guil recognise there's something familiar about the situation, but don't make the connection.

** The plays in ''AMidsummerNightsDream'' and ''Theatre/TheTamingOfTheShrew''.

* TomStoppard's absurdist play ''Theatre/TheRealInspectorHound'' is a play about two theatre critics watching a play. The play enters serious MindScrew territory when the lines between the 'inner' play and the 'outer' play are blurred, though. Moon and Birdboot inadvertently become part of the play in the third act, whilst the characters they replace then take their places in the audience and critique them.

* ''MaratSade'' is about a group of inmates doing a play.