The Play House

Keaton, 1921: he dreams a theater in which every role is played by Buster Keaton — orchestra, audience, twins, the monkey. Then he wakes up as a stagehand and wrecks a real show. Directed with Edward F. Cline. Multiple exposure as a personality disorder. It is the short in which Keaton discovered he could populate a world with himself and still be lonely in it. Two reels, no one else required.