Month: October 2008

Exposition and Forwards

Posted by Amy Szerlong

Group 3 (Erica, Sam and Amy) met during class period to begin discussing our analysis, and we ended up comparing our notes from Henry IV on these topics to help clarify. Here’s what we came up with as a culmination of handouts, our notes, and examples given in class.

Exposition

  • when/where is it delivered and how?
  • who knows what? who doesn’t?
  • what is it I need to know to move on?
  • what do we NEED to know in order to advance?
  • Example: In Act I Scene II of Henry IV, the audience learns the following: Falstaff is older and a drunkard. Hal foots the bill for his idiot and thieving friends.
  • So, exposition is basic facts about relationships, characters and the environment…

Forwards

  • what makes the play advance?
  • arouses audience interest in things to come
  • causes us to ask questions
  • again, moves play forward
  • Shakespeare dominated by forwards, (good plays and titles are dominated by forwards…)
  • Examples: In Henry IV – Robbery (tricking Falstaff), Mortimer’s plot to go against the king, initial line of play (exposition development…) war = who will win?, Hotspur called in front of king

This is as far as we got today. We are aware that these aren’t the most extensive series of notes, but since none of us have had the opportunity to finish reading Measure for Measure, we disbanded early to squeeze in some extra reading time! Additions are welcome!

Notes on Ball

Mary Beth’s Notes:

What Happens That Makes Something Else Happen?

-A play is a series of actions.
-A play is not about action, nor does it describe action.

-Action occurs when something happens that makes or permits something else to happen. Action is two “something happenings,” one leading to the other.

-The first thing to discover is how a play goes from one place to another. Find the first event of each action, then
the second, then the connection between the two. The play’s journey is contained within its actions. We must know every connection between every event, from the start of the play onwards.

-What happens that leads to something else happening?

-An event without a second, connected event, without effect or result, is either inadequate playwriting or, more
likely, inadequate play reading. In life and on stage unconnected events are irrelevant. Life aside, it is hard to make irrelevance theatrically viable.

The playwright crafts a series of actions: trigger and heap.

An event is anything that happens. When one event
causes or permits another event, the two events together
comprise an action. Actions are a play’s primary building
blocks.

And What Happens Next?

-Each trigger leads to a new heap. (Each event causes or permits a second event.) That is one action. The heap, the second event, becomes a trigger: a new first event of a new action.

If you can discover connections between events, you will be able to take us, step by step, event by connected event, action by action, right to the heap of bodies at play’s end.

But Do It Backwards

-Free will- Nothing predetermines that you will carry out an action just because somebody else triggers it.

Life goes on; it goes forward — but never predictably.

Only when we look at events in reverse order can we see, with certainty, how events took place.

Going forwards allows unpredictable possibility.

Going backwards exposes that which is required.

-From Backwards and Forwards by David Ball-

Group One

Group One:   1. What Happens That Makes Something Else Happen?
2. And What Happens Next?
3. But Do It Backwards – what are the implications of this

                                                           

Alex Nicolson

MaryBeth Gayle

Eric Houdek

Logan Turner