History ShowWithinAShow / Theatre

** The golden age of RadioDrama is represented by ''Dodge Rambler, Boy Buckaroo'', which partway through changes over to ''Rock Fury, Super GI''.

* ''Theatre/GutenbergTheMusical'' is essentially a pitch for a musical of the same name, presented as a one-night staged reading by the two creators of the show.

* ''Theatre/GoosebumbsTheMusical'' is all about students putting on a production of ''The Phantom'', a show similar to ''Theatre/ThePhantomOfTheOpera''.

* ''Theatre/GoosebumbsTheMusical'': The play-within-a-play, and the spooky events that transpired when that play was previously produced, are central to the plot.

* ''Theatre/GoosebumbsTheMusical'': The characters observe, in the song describing the play-within-a-play ("The Story of the Phantom"), that it parallels the events the characters are themselves living through.

* ''Theatre/SomethingRotten'': This musical show is about the creation of "''Omelette: The Musical''".

* ''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:

** 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/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.

* A RunningGag in the {{Franchise/Hatchetfield}} series is the Christmas movie ''Santa Claus is Goin' to High School'', a [[invoked]] SoBadItsGood musical involving Santa disguising himself as a teenage boy and attending high school for some reason. The characters who watch it are left trying to figure out what on earth the creators were thinking. It's an AffectionateParody of ''Film/HighSchoolMusical'' and ''Film/SeventeenAgain'', of which [[Creator/TeamStarkid the creators]] are big fans.

** ''The Murder of Gonzago'' in ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'', which is a play put on by Hamlet and was paralles with the actual murder of Hamlet's father.

** 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.''

* The second act opens with the record player playing ''The Enchanted Nightingale'' instead of ''The Drowsy Chaperone''; Man in Chair's monologue explains how the record got confused.

* ''The Knight of the Burning Pestle'' by Francis Beaumont is about an actor who is fed up with the current state of the theater, so he decides to make and perform his own play, while the play that was supposed to be performed, ''The London Merchant,'' struggles to keep going.

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

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

!!Examples of type 2 (characters are fans)

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

!!Examples of type 4 (PlotParallel)

* in ''Theatre/MoonlightAndMagnolias'', director Victor Fleming and producer David O. Selznick act out scenes from ''Literature/GoneWithTheWind'' for script doctor Ben Hecht, who's never read the book and needs to rewrite the screenplay in five days.

* 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.

* ''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.