The Playhouse is a 1921 American two-reel silent comic trick film written by, directed by, and starring Buster Keaton.

The film is set up as a series of humorous tricks on the audience, with constant doubling, and in which things are rarely what they at first seem to be.

[2] Keaton's portrayal of nine members of a minstrel show required the use of a special matte box in front of the camera lens.

Keaton synchronized his movements for each character's dance to the music of a banjo player who was playing along with a metronome – not a problem in a silent film.

[2][4] The Playhouse was released on October 6, 1921 and distributed by First National Attraction[5] According to Wild Man from Borneo: A Cultural History of the Orangutan (2014): "The comedy turns on Keaton's extraordinary ability to imitate an ape imitating a man as he dines at a table, smokes a cigar, and then jumps, unscripted, into the auditorium, making a woman faint.