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 h
orse 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.
The Art and Craft of Playwriting Page 13