Soapbox Square
 | This page needs visual enhancement. You can help All The Tropes by finding a high-quality image or video to illustrate the topic of this page. |
A Soapbox Square is a public space - often a square or park - where all sorts of people can be found making impassioned speeches about various subjects; usually political, but sometimes rather more bizarre. Crowds will gather to variously cheer or jeer.
This is the native environment of the Soapbox Sadie.
Examples of Soapbox Square include:
Film
- Brian, the title character in Monty Python's Life of Brian, hides out from the authorities in a plaza filled with speechifying mystics and prophets and starts spouting nonsense in order to blend in. Problem is the crowd thinks he's the First Coming.
Literature
- Blueberry Park in Daniel Pinkwater's story The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, where three speakers go on simultaneously about the virtues of vegetarianism, getting the British out of Kenya, and demonic possession. The protagonist then decides to make a speech himself and brave the hecklers.
- Sator Square in Discworld.[context?]
Theatre
- In Let 'Em Eat Cake, Union Square, Manhattan is where Kruger proclaims his anti-everything platform. Mary also happens to be selling her blue shirts there, and this is how they become the uniform of the revolution.
Tabletop Games
- Sigil in Planescape has The Hall of Speakers. Anyone may come, check in and speak whatever they want when the podium isn't occupied by usual factions's bickering or (very rarely) some sane attempt at law-making. Just don't be surprised if a boring speech summons a rain of rotten tomatoes. From Abyss.
Video Games
- The Game of the Ages: A man in the Laorsis square stands on a soapbox to protest littering. His soapbox turns out to bb the object of this particular puzzle, and you use it several times in your later adventures.
Web Animation
- Broken Saints features one.[context?]
Western Animation
- In The Simpsons, a lot of big speeches seem to be made near the statue of Jebediah Springfield.
- One pops up in South Park when the economy crashes. Named characters who speak there include Eric Cartman, Randy Marsh, and Kyle Broflovski.
Real Life
- Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, London; also known as The Geopolitical Centre of the Planet.
- In ancient Rome, speakers could do this at the Forum.
- Some universities have a special area near the quad where campus speech codes are not enforced. Naturally, this brings the weirdos out of the woodwork.