CHAPTER SIX

Great Beginnings

Every play teaches its audience how to watch it as they watch it. As a play begins, it instructs its audience how to comprehend its journey and its world. If the play says it is a comedy, the audience will agree to comprehend it as a comedy. This comedy cue is referred to as “giving the audience permission to laugh,” usually within the first minute or two of the action. If a play says it is a serious drama, then a serious dramatic experience will be expected, and that permission to laugh will most likely be delayed and granted less often. The beginning of a play is where you plant the seeds for everything to come. Guns displayed in the beginnings of plays often go off at their ends. Character flaws depicted on page five become running gags for the next 115 pages. It's like loading a revolver in preparation to fire it. A good play carries all of its details with it as it moves from its beginning to its conclusion.

Within the first few minutes of a well-constructed play, the audience must learn:

• the central characters (Who are they? How many?)

• the foreshadowing of the central dramatic action (What's the plot? What do the characters want? What's in their way?)

• the tone (Serious? Comic?)

• the style (Naturalism? Realism? Restoration?)

• the design—setting, sound, light, costume (A real bedroom? An abstract unit set? A bare stage?)

These factors create the world of the play. Most plays stay within the world established in their beginnings. A sudden break from that world or a wandering from the established action is apt to throw the audience off the track. If you subvert the expectations you've established early on, you'd better have a good reason. Imagine an Odd Couple that suddenly changes its plot so that Felix catches an incurable disease. Imagine a Hamlet that suddenly has Hamlet telling jokes to the audience.

In writing a play today, you have approximately ten to fifteen minutes to set space, time, tone, situation, most major characters and the central issue of the drama. If these central points are not elucidated early on, your audience will lose focus quickly and become frustrated in their attempt to understand and enjoy the play. Aristotle describes this in the Poetics: “In the first act set forth the case.” And a dramatic “case,” like a case in a court of law, requires evidence and information. This detailing of information vitally important to the audience's understanding and enjoyment of the play is called exposition.

EXPOSITION

Exposition tells the audience what has happened, what is happening, and what may happen next. Exposition can be communicated in a number of ways:

• Through dialogue between characters onstage

• Through monologues spoken by one character to either an unseen character or directed toward the audience

• Through stage action

• Through design elements (sets, lights, sound, costumes)

Most exposition, however, is accomplished by dialogue. There are two ways of communicating expositional information to the audience via dialogue:

1. Representational exposition

2. Presentational exposition

A representational depiction of reality is an attempt to make an onstage dramatic scene appear as if it were happening in much the same way it would in real life. In a representational play, the onstage characters behave as if they are unaware of the audience's presence. A representational play behaves as if unaware of its own artifice. The actors stay “in character” as characters. The onstage characters assume a real fourth wall separates them from the audience. The play pretends it is not a play.

A presentational play depicts reality within the frame of a theatrical presentation. It knows it is a “show.” In a presentational play, the characters do behave as if they are aware an audience is watching. Soliloquies, asides, direct-address, even audience interaction underline this kind of presentation. The actors are saying, in effect, “We are presenting a play to you. We are not pretending to be real. We know you're out there.”

Let's look at a few examples of representational exposition. Arguably, it is much more difficult to write exposition in representational theater. You want to suggest place, time and character relationships. You need to move the story's conflict along as well, and propel the action forward. When striving for a naturalistic effect in an opening scene between two old college roommates who were once rivals for the same woman's affections, it would be ham-handed to have the expository exchange go like this:

BILL: It certainly is good to see you, Tom, my old roommate.

TOM: I feel the same, Bill, even though we used to have affection for the same girl.

Why doesn't this exposition work in a representational, realistic scene? Because people don't talk like this in real life. So what do you do? You look for the code words that suggest place, time and relationships:

BILL: Who was the guy who lived down the hall from us?

TOM: The big fat one from Nebraska?

BILL: Right. Lowest GPA in the freshman class. Ginnie used to tutor him.

TOM: Yeah. Ginnie.

    (Pause)

BILL: Sorry, sore subject. You still hear from her?

TOM: No. (Beat) You?

The first representational exposition example is crude and simplistic. The second is subtler and more dramatically effective. By using code words that refer to college (“GPA,” “freshman class,” “tutor,” “down the hall”), the playwright will lead the audience to a conclusion: that these two characters were college roommates. By mentioning one name, “Ginnie”—a name that causes a momentary halt in the conversation—the playwright can not only add further information but also suggest the possibility of a love triangle between two men and one woman. What's useful, as well, is that this past triangle, this past offstage conflict, might become part of a present onstage conflict as well. A past action may influence a present action. The old rivalry over Ginnie might come back.

When using code in writing exposition, the playwright must seek out the words, phrases, and points of reference endemic to the place, situation, action and characters involved.

An audience hangs onto exposition that has to do with the dramatic questions posed by the play. An audience hangs onto exposition that has to do with conflict, with action, with mysteries. To that end, the best kind of exposition is deeply worked into the fiber and muscle of the drama. And dramatic exposition is best displayed in active, forward-moving exchanges spoken by characters who need to tell information to other characters who need to know, especially when the information is part of ongoing action, mystery and conflict.

In Anton Chekhov's final play, The Cherry Orchard, the character of Lopahkin begins his speech about the declining fortunes of the estate on about the tenth page of the first scene. He is delivering vital information to the audience. If we don't understand the central situation, we won't be able to enjoy the rest of the play. But the audience isn't the only group that needs to know. Lopahkin needs to tell because other characters onstage need to know. Madame Ranevskaya has just returned from Paris, and she must be informed about the dire straits in which her orchard now finds itself. Lopahkin is “in character” in this expository speech because Chekhov has made him the kind of big-talking man who likes to orate in front of groups. And the conflict is that the characters onstage during his speech, the characters who most need to understand the information he is imparting, don't want to listen. Lopahkin, as a character, has a need. This need is frustrated by other characters onstage. There is a conflict. So he must act. He speaks.

LOPAHKIN: Your brother here, Leonid Andreich, says I'm a boor, a moneygrubber, but I don't mind. Let him talk. All I want is that you should trust me as you used to, and that your wonderful, touching eyes should look at me as they did then.… I wish I could tell you something very pleasant and cheering. (Glances at his watch.) I must go directly, there's no time to talk, but … well, I'll say it in a couple of words. As you know, the cherry orchard is to be sold to pay your debts. The auction is set for August twenty-second, but you need not worry, my dear, you can sleep in peace, there is a way out. This is my plan. Now, please listen! Your estate is only twenty versts from town, the railway runs close by, and if the cherry orchard and the land along the river were cut up into lots and leased for summer cottages, you'd have, at the very least, an income of twenty-five thousand a year.

GAYEV: Excuse me, what nonsense!

LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: I don't quite understand you, Yermolai Alekseich.

LOPAHKIN: You will get, at the very least, twenty-five rubles a year for a two-and-a-half-acre lot, and if you advertise now, I guarantee you won't have a single plot of ground left by autumn, everything will be snapped up. In short, I congratulate you, you are saved. The site is splendid, the river is deep. Only, of course, the ground must be cleared … you must tear down all the old outbuildings, for instance, and this house, which is worthless, cut down the old cherry orchard—

LYUBOV ANDREYEVNA: Cut it down? Forgive me, my dear, but you don't know what you are talking about. If there is one thing in the whole province that is interesting, not to say remarkable, it's our cherry orchard.

LOPAHKIN: The only remarkable thing about this orchard is that it is very big. There's a crop of cherries every other year, and then you can't get rid of them, nobody buys them.

GAYEV: This orchard is even mentioned in the Encyclopedia.

LOPAHKHIN: (glancing at his watch) If we don't think of something and come to a decision, on the twenty-second of August the cherry orchard, and the entire estate, will be sold at auction. Make up your minds! There is no other way out, I swear to you. None whatsoever.

The audience knows everything it must to enjoy the main action and central question of the rest of the play before The Cherry Orchard's first ten minutes have passed.

Let's look at another example of character/conflict-driven exposition, this one from Sam Shepard's True West. It begins late at night in a kitchen. Austin, weary and tense, is trying to write at a typewriter. Lee, somewhat drunk, is at the sink, watching Austin.

LEE: So, Mom took off for Alaska, huh?

AUSTIN: Yeah.

LEE: Sorta' left you in charge.

AUSTIN: Well, she knew I was coming down here so she offered me the place.

LEE: You keepin' the plants watered?

AUSTIN: Yeah.

LEE: Keepin' the sink clean? She don't like even a single tea leaf in the sink ya' know.

AUSTIN: (Trying to concentrate on writing) Yeah, I know.

(Pause)

LEE: She gonna' be up there a long time?

AUSTIN: I don't know.

LEE: Kinda' nice for you, huh? Whole place to yourself.

AUSTIN: Yeah, it's great.

LEE: Ya' got crickets anyway. Tons a' crickets out there. (Looks around kitchen) Ya' got groceries? Coffee?

AUSTIN: (Looking up from writing) What?

LEE: You got coffee?

AUSTIN: Yeah.

LEE: At's good. (Short pause) Real coffee? From the bean?

AUSTIN: Yeah. You want some?

LEE: Naw, I brought some uh—(Motions to beer)

AUSTIN: Help yourself to whatever's—(Motions to refrigerator)

LEE: I will. Don't worry about me. I'm not the one to worry about. I mean I can uh—(Pause) You always work by candlelight?

AUSTIN: No—uh—Not always.

LEE: Just sometimes?

AUSTIN: (Puts pen down, rubs his eyes) Yeah. Sometimes it's soothing.

LEE: Isn't that what the old guys did?

AUSTIN: What old guys?

LEE: The Forefathers. You know.

AUSTIN: Forefathers?

LEE: Isn't that what they did? Candlelight burning into the night? Cabins in the wilderness.

AUSTIN: (Rubs hand through his hair) I suppose.

LEE: I'm not botherin' you am I? I mean I don't wanna break into yer uh—concentration or nothin'.

In this scene, we see Austin and Lee's age-old sibling rivalry (conflict/tension), the new situation (premise), the types of people involved (character), and the potential for the relationship to erupt later in the play (action). In the meantime, we also learn the vital exposition that Austin is a writer, Lee is his brother, their mother is in Alaska, and Austin is ostensibly in charge of the house. The opening lines of True West are a great example of active, character-driven, forward-moving exposition in representational theater.

Presentational exposition would appear, at first glance, to be an easier kind of exposition to write. If the play is aware of itself as a play—if there is a high level of self-consciousness—then the audience will accept the actors marching downstage at will and speaking to them whenever important information must be communicatated. But nondramatic exposition should be employed sparingly in drama. Gram Slaton, the playwright and teacher I learned a lot from early on, once said to me, “Monologues are the easiest kind of speeches to write. They're also the hardest to justify.” He was right. And any actor saddled with expositional monologues will tell you that he becomes exhausted and the audience becomes restless if the exposition is communicated without a sense of urgency or dramatic need. No less so than in good dramatic dialogue, expositional monologues need character, conflict and action.

How can you achieve that sense of dramatic need in a monologue? The audience needs to know. And the character needs to tell. Only when this dynamic exchange exists is there a dramatic relationship between the audience and the actor delivering the exposition.

Let's look at two direct-address presentational monologues from Peter Shaffer's Equus and Shakespeare's Richard III.

Equus

Darkness. Silence. Dim light up on the square. In a spotlight stands ALAN STRANG, a lean boy of seventeen, in sweater and jeans. In front of him, the horse NUGGET. ALAN's pose represents a contour of great tenderness: his head is pressed against the shoulder of the horse, his hands stretching up to fondle its head. The horse in turn nuzzles his neck. The flame of a cigarette lighter jumps in the dark. Lights come up slowly on the circle. On the left bench, downstage, MARTIN DYSART, smoking. A man in his mid-forties.

DYSART. With one particular horse, called Nugget, he embraces. The animal digs its sweaty brow into his cheek, and they stand in the dark for an hour—like a necking couple. And of all nonsensical things—I keep thinking about the horse! Not the boy: the horse, and what it may be trying to do. I keep seeing that huge head kissing him with its chained mouth. Nudging through the metal some desire absolutely irrelevant to filling its belly or propagating its own kind. What desire could that be? Not to stay a horse any longer? Not to remain reined up for ever in those particular genetic strings? Is it possible, at certain moments we cannot imagine, a horse can add its sufferings together—the nonstop jerks and jabs that are its daily life—and turn them into grief? What use is grief to a horse?

ALAN leads NUGGET out of the square and they disappear together up the tunnel, the horse's hooves scraping delicately on the wood. DYSART rises, and addresses the audience.

You see, I'm lost. What use, I should be asking, are questions like these to an overworked psychiatrist in a provincial hospital? They're worse than useless: they are, in fact, subversive.

HE enters the square. The light grows brighter.

The thing is, I'm desperate. You see, I'm wearing that horse's head myself. That's the feeling. All reined up in old language and old assumptions, straining to jump clean-hoofed on to a whole new track of being I only suspect is there. I can't see it, because my educated, average head is being held at the wrong angle. I can't jump because the bit forbids it, and my own basic force—my horsepower, if you like—is too little. The only thing I know for sure is this: a horse's head is finally unknowable to me. Yet I handle children's heads—which I must presume to be more complicated, at least in the area of my chief concern.… In a way, it has nothing to do with this boy. The doubts have been there for years, piling up steadily in this dreary place. It's only the extremity of this case that's made them active. I know that. The extremity is the point! All the same, whatever the reason, they are now, these doubts, not just vaguely worrying—but intolerable … I'm sorry. I'm not making much sense. Let me start properly: in order. It began one Monday last month, with Hesther's visit.

Richard III

Enter RICHARD, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, solus.

RICHARD:	Now is the winter of our discontent
	Made glorious summer by this son of York;
	And all the clouds that lowered upon our house
	In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
	Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,
	Our bruised arms hung up for monuments,
	Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
	Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
	Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front,
	And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
	To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
	He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
	To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
	But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks
	Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
	I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty
	To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
	I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion,
	Cheated of feature by dissembling Nature.
	Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
	Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
	And that so lamely and unfashionable
	That dogs bark at me as I halt by them—
	Why I, in this weak piping time of peace,
	Have no delight to pass away the time,
	Unless to see my shadow in the sun
	And descant on mine own deformity.
	And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
	To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
	I am determined to prove a villain
	And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
	Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
	By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
	To set my brother Clarence and the king
	In deadly hate the one against the other;
	And if King Edward be as true and just
	As I am subtle, false, and treacherous,
	This day should Clarence closely be mewed up
	About a prophecy which says that G
	Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
	Dive, thoughts, down to my soul—here Clarence comes!

 

In both presentational monologues, an intriguing, articulate and engaging character presents information to the audience. It's information we need to know before the play can progress. Where is the conflict? Where is the action? What is the need to tell?

In Equus, Dr. Dysart is engaged in solving a mystery. Why did Alan Strang blind six horses? He needs to find the solution to the mystery. And he needs to understand why his life of the mind feels so emotionally incomplete compared to that of the boy charged with the violent act he has been asked to investigate. Dr. Dysart needs to solve the mystery, but he also needs to make sense of his own life. He is a psychiatrist, and he needs a listener.

In Richard III, the Duke of Gloucester is about to set in motion the murderous plot that will bring him the crown. He must establish his background—the pains, the slights, the resentment. He must establish his ability—his chameleonlike nature, his strategic thinking, his wit. And, like many men of action, he must have a sounding board for his plans, his “brainstorming.” Richard must commit crimes to gain the throne, and he needs a confidant and coconspirator.

In each case, the character is either in conflict or is about to enter conflict. In the midst of action, he needs someone to hear his story. The audience fills his need.

In review, then, representational exposition requires a subtle, sometimes coded, but dramatically active approach. Presentational exposition may be more overt in its delivery of information but must play by the same taut dramatic rules to be dramatically effective.

TWO WAYS TO START THE JOURNEY

A play is a journey, both for the characters in the play and for the audience attending it. Kira Obolensky, a talented playwright who's writing a stage adaptation of Don Quixote for Trinity Rep, said to me once, “You begin a play on a highway. Either you drop the audience right onto the fast lane, or you bring them down slowly off the entrance ramp.” A play can start with a bang and we're off, or it can begin by slower increments. There are good arguments for both methods. Let's title each: We're off! and Slow Immersion.

We're Off!

We live in a caffeinated time. A late twentieth-century theater audience is much more apt to be attuned to the speed and rhythms of popular music, film and electronic entertainment (TV, video, the Internet) than to the slower tempos of the past. For the modern audience, slow and easy may be dull and deadly. The faster the play gets out of the starting gate, the better. There's an immediate rush, a sudden jolt to the senses a play can achieve by starting with a bang. But what can deliver the bang?

It could be an image. An onstage murder. A dance. A rapid entrance. A joke. Anything theatrical that arrests the eye and ear and connects the audience immediately to the action that is taking place and the story that is about to be told. It is always connected both to the back-story of the play (the inciting incident) and the major dramatic question and action of the play (the point of attack).

Look at the opening of Six Degrees of Separation by John Guare.

A painting revolves slowly high over the stage. The painting is by Kandinsky. He has painted on either side of the canvas in two different styles. One side is geometric and somber. The other side is wild and vivid. The painting stops its revolve and opts for the geometric side. A couple run on stage, in nightdress, very agitated. FLANDERS KITTREDGE is 44. LOUISA KITTREDGE is 43. They are very attractive. They speak to us.

OUISA: Tell them!

FLAN: I am shaking.

OUISA: You have to do something!

FLAN: It's awful.

OUISA: Is anything gone?

FLAN: How can I look? I'm shaking.

OUISA: (To us) Did he take anything?

FLAN: Would you concentrate on yourself?

OUISA: I want to know if anything's gone.

FLAN: (To us) We came in the room.

OUISA: I went in first. You didn't see what I saw.

FLAN: Calm down.

OUISA: We could have been killed.

FLAN: The silver Victorian inkwell.

OUISA: How can you think of things? We could have been murdered.

An ACTOR appears for a moment holding up an ornate Victorian inkwell capped by a silver beaver.

FLAN: There's the inkwell. Silver beaver. Why?

OUISA: Slashed—our throats slashed.

Another ACTOR appears for a moment holding up a framed portrait of a dog, say, a pug.

FLAN: And there's the watercolor. Our dog.

OUISA: Go to bed at night happy and then murdered. Would we have woken up?

FLAN: Now I lay me down to sleep—the most terrifying words—just think of it—

OUISA: I pray the Lord my soul to keep—

FLAN: The nightmare part—if I should die before I wake—

OUISA: If I should die—I pray the Lord my soul to take—

FLAN AND OUISA: Oh.

OUISA: It's awful.

FLAN: We're alive.

FLAN stops, frightened suddenly, listening.

FLAN: Hello?

HE holds HER.

FLAN: Hello!

OUISA: (Whispers) You don't call out Hello unless—

FLAN: I think we'd tell if someone else were here.

OUISA: We didn't all night. Oh, it was awful awful awful awful.

THEY pull off their robes and are smartly dressed for dinner.

FLAN: (To us) We were having a wonderful evening last night.

OUISA: (To us) A friend we hadn't seen for many years came by for dinner.

FLAN: (Portentously) A friend from South Africa—

Now look at the opening of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Enter BERNARDO and FRANCISCO, two sentinels.

BERNARDO: Who's there?

FRANCISCO: Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.

BERNARDO: Long live the king!

FRANCISCO: Bernardo?

BERNARDO: He.

FRANCISCO: You come most carefully upon your hour.

BERNARDO: 'Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.

FRANCISCO: For this relief much thanks. 'Tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart.

BERNARDO: Have you had quiet guard?

FRANCISCO: Not a mouse stirring.

BERNARDO: Well, good night.

If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,

The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS.

FRANCISCO: I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who is there?

HORATIO: Friends to this ground.

MARCELLUS: And liegemen to the Dane.

FRANCISCO: Give you good night.

MARCELLUS: O, farewell, honest soldier.

Who hath relieved you?

FRANCISCO: Bernardo hath my place.

Give you good night.

Exit FRANCISCO.

MARCELLUS: Holla, Bernardo!

BERNARDO: Say—

What, is Horatio there?

HORATIO: A piece of him.

BERNARDO: Welcome, Horatio. Welcome, good Marcellus.

HORATIO: What, has this thing appeared again to-night?

BERNARDO: I have seen nothing.

MARCELLUS: Horatio say s 'tis but our fantasy,

And will not let belief take hold of him

Touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us.

Therefore I have entreated him along

With us to watch the minutes of this night,

That, if again this apparition come,

He may approve our eyes and speak to it.

HORATIO: Tush, tush, 'twill not appear.

BERNARDO: Sit down awhile,

And let us once again assail your ears,

That are so fortified against our story,

What we two nights have seen.

HORATIO: Well, sit we down,

And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.

BERNARDO: Last night of all,

When yond same star that's westward from the pole

Had made his course t'illume that part of heaven

Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,

The bell then beating one—

Enter GHOST.

MARCELLUS: Peace, break thee off. Look where it comes again.

BERNARDO: In the same figure like the king that's dead.

MARCELLUS: Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.

BERNARDO: Looks 'a not like the king? Mark it, Horatio.

HORATIO: Most like. It harrows me with fear and wonder.

BERNARDO: It would be spoke to.

MARCELLUS: Speak to it, Horatio.

HORATIO: What art thou that usurp'st this time of night

Together with that fair and warlike form

In which the majesty of buried Denmark

Did sometimes march? By heaven I charge thee, speak.

MARCELLUS: It is offended.

BERNARDO: See, it stalks away.

HORATIO: Stay. Speak, speak. I charge thee, speak.

Exit GHOST.

What is the similarity here? In both plays, we start with a mysterious opening depicted in dialogue of short, staccato sentences. The impression of urgency is communicated to the audience. Something is wrong. A balance has been or is just about to be disturbed. A balance in the kingdom, and a balance in a home.

In Hamlet, it is the balance between the known world and the “undiscovered country” of the dead. In Six Degrees it is the balance between privileged complacence and the dangers of intrusion. In each play, a world is established. And then there is a change. Something is wrong: a ghost is roaming the battlements of Elsinore castle; the Kittredges have just survived the shock of an intruder.

In the first moments of both plays, the playwright has provided a highly theatrical means of communicating the jumping-off point of his story. In Hamlet, we witness this through peripheral, supporting characters (none of the major players has made his first appearance). In Six Degrees, the couple at the center of the play begin their own story. And we're off. In these cases, the scenes pave the way for both the revelation of the inciting incident and the point of attack. Six Degrees is a perfect example. In this opening moment, we see the results of the evening the Kittredges spent with Paul, the young con man who pretended to be the son of Sidney Poitier (the inciting incident). Following this scene, the Kittredges will decide to find out who Paul really is and embark on their own investigation (point of attack). Guare has found a theatrical and dramatic way to start his plot at the fulcrum of his inciting incident and his point of attack.

But when using the “we're off” approach, the playwright must be mindful of the audience's level of observation and attention. It can be argued that the opening of a play provides ultimate attention for an audience, ultimate focus. But it can also be argued that at this early stage of the proceedings, the audience may not have yet found its bearings, may not yet have readied itself to focus its full attention on the performance. Perhaps an audience member has just sat down moments before the curtain has gone up. Perhaps he's thinking about a fight at home. Perhaps she's thinking about a problem at the office.

In the plays cited above, the playwrights employ a shrewd technique to energize the performance, begin the story, turn on the plot and introduce characters. But the playwrights also do something else. They return to the moment later on—just in case. In the opening of Hamlet, we encounter the ghost and are introduced to the mystery of its appearance. Why is it on the battlements? What is its purpose? A dramatic question has been posed, but Shakespeare will pose it again in Act One, Scene Two, and again in Act One, Scene Three, and again and again in Act One, Scene Five. No audience member could possibly miss it. In Six Degrees, Guare moves from his dazzling opening to a flashback as the Kittredges tell the story of what happened to them the night before. In twenty-five minutes of playing time, the action will come full circle. The Kittredges will discover the intruder with his “friend,” and the opening dialogue will begin again, as if in a “loop.” If the audience didn't quite catch the dialogue the first time in the opening, Guare has made sure to bring it back again. That's craft.

The “we're off!” method buys theatrical excitement, but it also requires dramatic insurance. The key point to remember is that the “we're off!” method is designed to provide the background for the major action of the play, the inciting incident, and to lead toward the character's major conflict and pursuit, the point of attack.

Slow Immersion

The alternative to the “we're off!” approach of starting a play on the high-speed lane is the “slow immersion” approach, a way of acclimating the audience to the plot. Imagine a person calmly and deliberately lowering himself into cold water inch by inch, step by step, until his body is fully inured to the new environment. Slow immersion.

This method is employed more often in representational theater and finds its greatest examples in plays written between the end of the nineteenth century and today. This method underlines the audience's need to believe in the world being represented to them. Slow immersion into a play or a scene requires time. But the best examples of this method are never slow moving. Look at Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler.

Act One

A large, nicely furnished drawing room. In the rear wall is a wide doorway with curtains drawn back. The doorway leads to another smaller room which in turn communicates with other rooms in the house. A large framed mirror on the upstage wall dominates this smaller room.

In the stage right wall is a doorway leading to the entrance hall.

In the stage left wall is a large window. In the down left corner of the wall is a small door to the outside.

In the down right corner is a white tile, wood-burning stove. The chimney extends out of sight.

Also in the room, a high-backed chair, a cushioned footstool, an oval table, a two-seater sofa, several side chairs.

Up left is a baby grand piano, on which numerous bouquets of roses have been arranged.

It is early morning. Sunlight through the window.

MISS JULIANA TESMAN, about sixty-five, wearing a simple gray suit, wearing a hat and carrying a parasol, enters from the hall.

She is followed by BERTHE, the Tesmans' maid. BERTHE carries yet another bouquet of roses.

MISS TESMAN: (Hushed) I can't believe it. They're still in bed.

BERTHE: (Also hushed) I told you, Miss. With the boat getting in so late last night and then the young lady couldn't rest until I'd unpacked every one of the trunks.

MISS TESMAN: Yes, yes. Well, let them sleep in. But goodness knows they'll want some fresh morning air when they finally do emerge.

SHE throws windows wide open.

BERTHE: There's just nowhere left for these poor flowers. Maybe I could just put them here, Miss.

MISS TESMAN: So here you are, Berthe, with a new master now—and a new mistress. God knows it nearly finished me to let you go.

BERTHE: (Near tears) Think of me. Miss! What do you think it's like for me after all the blessed years I've been with you and Miss Rina?

MISS TESMAN: We must rise above, Berthe. We must rise above. There's nothing else we can do. George must have you here with him in this house. He simply must. You've looked after him since he was a tiny boy.

BERTHE: Oh, I know, Miss. But I can't help thinking about Miss Rina, lying there, helpless, poor thing. And the new girl! She doesn't know the first thing about looking after someone so sick.

MISS TESMAN: Oh, we'll manage. I suppose I'll have to take most of the burden on myself. But we'll manage, dear Berthe. Don't worry yourself over my poor sister.

BERTHE: There is something else, Miss. I'm frightened that the young lady won't find me to her liking.

MISS TESMAN: Oh, you're being foolish, Berthe. Certainly at the beginning there may be one or two little problems, but—

BERTHE: I have a feeling she'll be very demanding.

MISS TESMAN: Well, of course she will! She's General Gabler's daughter. Just think what her life was like when he was still alive! Remember her out riding with her father, galloping past us in the street? In that long, black dress with a feather in her hat?

BERTHE: Oh, yes, I remember. I couldn't have dreamt then that she'd wind up married to our little scholar.

MISS TESMAN: No, no, neither could I. But Berthe dear, our George is no longer a little scholar. You mustn't call him that. You have to say, “Doctor.”

BERTHE: Yes, yes. So the mistress told me last night, as soon as they walked through the door.

What do we learn from this initial “slow immersion” into Hedda Gabler? Hedda has not even come onstage yet. Neither has her husband George Tesman, her former lover Eilert Lovborg, the sly Judge Brack, or the naive Mrs. Elvstead. Miss Tesman and Berthe are the smallest roles in the play. But Ibsen is patiently laying his groundwork. His set description tells us a lot: we're in an upper-middle class drawing room at the turn of the century. Lots of flowers suggest a woman's presence and a homecoming. All of the entrances and exits will be used to maximum effect later in the play, as will the furniture, especially that stove. We know that someone has just returned from a trip. We know that the maid used to work for Miss Tesman but now works for the young master of the house. We know that Miss Tesman's sister Rina is dying. We know that “General Gabler's daughter” is spectacular and difficult. From these opening moments we learn:

• the central characters (Hedda—“General Gabler's daughter”—and Dr. George Tesman, her husband)

• the foreshadowing of the central dramatic action (Will Hedda survive this setting?)

• the tone of the play (Serious)

• the style of the play (Naturalism)

• and the design—setting, sound, light, costume—of the play (A realistically depicted drawing room)

The “slow immersion” strategy is different from the “we're off!” method, but the key point to remember is that the “slow immersion” method is also designed to provide the background for the major action of the play, the inciting incident and to lead toward the character's major conflict and pursuit, the point of attack.

Two points of departure. One destination. Quoting Aristotle, “The case is made.” And the play has started.

EXERCISES

1. Introduce two characters. In twenty lines of representational exposition, let your audience know that one is a construction worker, the other a psychiatrist; that the setting is a church; that the two characters are waiting for the same person to enter; that the president of the United States is visiting the city in which the scene takes place. Use code words/phrases/references to suggest professions, place, offstage characters in a natural manner.

2. Decide when the action of your story starts. Write down the first action of the play. Consider this first action. Is this the point of attack? Or is this action the inciting incident to the point of attack. Or is it a lesser action? The way to tell is this: The most dramatically exciting action is the one that comes at the point of attack.

3. What does your audience need to know in the first few minutes of your play? Write a presentational scene that delivers exposition at the beginning of the play. Put the key exposition in a monologue. Choose a character in your story who has a strong need to tell someone—either the audience or an unseen character—the exposition.

4. Now write the same exposition in representational dialogue. Use code, use conflict.

5. Now try to write the exposition without dialogue. Use stage action without words. Use the set. Use sound and music. Use slides above the stage if need be. Be as economical as possible.

6. Write the first scene of the play in the “we're off!” method. This may lead you toward a presentational mode. Find the dramatic, theatrical moment in the early part of your story that will grab the audience's attention in the first seconds of the play. Will it entice the audience? Will it confuse them? Will it make them lean forward and want to learn more? Will you have to go back and fill in some blanks, a la Six Degrees of Separation?

7. Write the first scene of the play in the “slow immersion” method. You'll probably find you employ a representational mode here. What small questions can you pose to hook the audience as you move toward revealing the inciting incident and then pushing toward the point of attack?

8. In Six Degrees of Separation John Guare shows us the inciting incident—the night Ouisa and Flan spent with Paul “Pokier”—that propels his play forward. For your play, write a scene where you depict the inciting incident onstage. If you were rewriting Hamlet you would write the scene of King Hamlet's murder by his brother Claudius.

9. In Hamlet, Shakespeare does not show us the inciting incident that propels the play forward. It is told to Hamlet and the audience by the ghost. Now write a scene that reports on your inciting incident as an event that took place in the past, as Shakespeare does when the ghost tells Hamlet about his murder. If you were rewriting Six Degrees, you'd write a scene where Ouisa Kittredge tells someone about the night she and her husband spent with the intruder, Paul.

10. Decide which of the above two methods is more conducive to the story you wish to tell and the plot you wish to structure.