CHAPTER 3
Foundations of the Plot: Background Story
Now that we have studied the present, we can turn our attention to the past. The lives of the characters begin long before they appear on stage, and their pasts are indispensable for understanding their present lives on stage. Every dramatic story has a past, but the conventional time and space features of the theatre require special writing skill to illustrate all of it on stage. Playwrights employ a unique kind of narration to reveal the past at the same time the stage action is still going on. Exposition is the standard term for this dramatic convention, but sometimes it is also referred to as previous action or antecedent action. The word exposition comes from the Latin root exposito, meaning to put forward or to expose. This term has proven useful because exposition is a way of exposing the hidden parts of a play.
Unfortunately, the abstract term exposition often calls up an uncritical response. According to some, exposition tells the audience everything they need to know about the past to understand what they are going to see; it is considered a playwriting annoyance. It involves a certain amount of dullness, but skillful dramatists are able to handle it without holding up the action of the play. This explanation carries unpleasant overtones. It gives the impression that exposition is an awkward technical requirement that obstructs the flow of the plot. The unpleasantness increases when scholars talk about protactic characters such as the Chorus in classical Greek tragedies or certain servants in modern plays, introduced, it is said, for disclosing exposition.
Actors, directors, and designers cannot let the matter rest here. What exposition means to theatre artists is a vital element in the full-scale understanding of a play. We should attempt to understand the past in a way that makes it compelling, not a clumsy obstacle to overcome. This involves several important adjustments in ways of thinking about a play. First, the notion that what has already happened is somehow dull and undramatic must be set aside. After all, for the characters themselves, it is just the opposite. To them the past is not just an abstract literary concept, but rather their own lives—everything good and bad that has happened to them. Second, the past should be understood as an integral part of the play, not a clumsy literary burden. It helps in understanding the characters that are themselves talking about the past, it creates moods, and it generates conflicts. Third, to be reminded of the dramatic possibilities of the past, replace the static term exposition with the more energetic term background story, or the film term back story. The basic lesson here for actors, directors, and designers is that background story does not interfere with the flow of the action. On the contrary, it propels the play forward in explosive surges and with an increasing sense of urgency.
Background story involves everything that happened before the beginning of the play. Time and again it is crucial to know what went on prior to the stage action. In Oedipus Rex the fate of Jocasta’s infant son is an example. Did Jocasta bind the infant’s feet and turn him over to a household servant with orders to abandon him? Where did the Corinthian Messenger obtain the infant he gave to King Polybus and Queen Merope? He claims that he obtained the infant from one of Laius’ herdsmen. But why did the herdsman give the baby to him in the first place? Did the infant belong to the herdsman? If not, who gave it to him and why? Is the shepherd the herdsman who gave the infant to the Corinthian Messenger? If the answer is yes, why is he unwilling to acknowledge it? All these questions and many more about the background story are decisive in the plot of Oedipus Rex.
The past becomes even more intricate when it is employed as Ibsen did in, for example, The Wild Duck. In the excerpt from Act 1 that follows, Gregers Werle has returned home after a long absence. He has a sharp disagreement with his father about the fate of the Ekdal family, who used to be their close friends. But we should guard against unjustifiable assumptions about the past. Reliability should not depend on Gregers’ recollections nor on those of any single character. By the way, it is a good idea to get into the habit of underlining the background story as we do here to distinguish it from the on-stage action.
GREGERS
How has that family been allowed to go so miserably to the wall?
WERLE
You mean the Ekdals, I suppose?
GREGERS
Yes, I mean the Ekdals. Lieutenant Ekdal who was once so closely associated with you?
WERLE
Much too closely; I have felt that to my cost for many a year. It is thanks to him that I—yes I—have had a kind of slur cast upon my reputation.
GREGERS
(softly) Are you sure that he alone was to blame?
WERLE
Who else do you suppose?
GREGERS
You and he acted together in that affair of the forests—
WERLE
But was it not Ekdal that drew the map of the tracts we had bought—that fraudulent map! It was he who felled all the timber illegally on government ground. In fact, the whole management was in his hands. I was quite in the dark as to what Lieutenant Ekdal was doing.
GREGERS
Lieutenant Ekdal himself seems to have been very much in the dark about what he was doing.
WERLE
That may be. But the fact is that he was found guilty and I was acquitted.
GREGERS
Yes, I know that nothing was proved against you.
Since the interpretations of the past presented by these characters are incompatible or at least incomplete, readers are obliged to formulate their own accounts. This involves understanding what happened and why in a very detailed way. It also means knowing whose version of the past is correct and how much of it is reliable. In the excerpt here, the characters disagree about the reasons for the decline of the Ekdals. Gregers indicts his father for it, while Mr. Werle seems to lay the blame on Lieutenant Ekdal, the head of the family and Werle’s former business partner. Later in the play, Lieutenant Ekdal offers his own interpretation to his son, Hjalmar and to his daughter-in-law, Gina. Who is right? Who benefits from each version? In such cases, readers should examine each version of the story skeptically, as trial lawyers do.
TECHNIQUE
Let’s first study the basic techniques playwrights employ to disclose background story and then consider some ways of identifying it. By approaching the topic in this way, it should be easier to understand the workings of the background story in the play as a whole.
Background story emerges in two ways. It appears in extended passages near the beginning of a play or in fragments distributed throughout the action. There is no advantage in craftsmanship or plausibility either way. The choice depends on the author’s goals and the practical requirements of the play. Playwriting fashions also play a part. Both methods have been used in a wide assortment of plays, can be used simultaneously, and are capable of revealing the past without interrupting the flow of the action or harming the play’s plausibility.
Historical Technique
In plays written before the nineteenth century, the background story tends to emerge early in extended speeches. Note how this operates in Hamlet. We studied 1,1 for its political conditions in the last chapter. Horatio’s lengthy speech consists of 29 lines explaining the reasons behind Denmark’s preparations for war. In the next scene, Claudius has a speech of 34 lines expressing his gratitude to the court for their support during the recent transfer of power. He also explains his strategy for dealing with the political threat posed by Fortinbras. At the end of this scene, more background story is disclosed. In a famous soliloquy of about 50 lines, Hamlet reveals his feelings about his father’s recent death and his mother’s hasty remarriage. In 1,3 Laertes censures Ophelia in a speech of 34 lines, warning her not to be misled by Hamlet’s fondness for her. Besides being a warning to Ophelia, this is also background story. In 1,4 the Ghost materializes, then in a discourse of 50 lines in 1,5 he discloses the circumstances of his death. At this point in the play, the characters have revealed most of the background story in five speeches totaling about 200 lines. Most of the background stories in Tartuffe and The School for Scandal unfolds in a few long speeches early in those plays, too.
The technique of early extended narration has advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, it focuses attention because it collects all the essential facts of the background story together at the beginning of the play. This permits the dramatist to devote the remainder of the play to the development of on-stage action, which is a considerable writing and performance benefit. On the other hand, extended narration can be a burden on actors and audiences. For actors, it is essential to express all the important background information in densely packed speeches, while at the same time maintaining emotional honesty and logical consistency. Audiences must digest most of the background story at one time and note who the important characters are and what they did. And they must remember it throughout the action that follows.
Early Modern Technique
For artistic reasons, another method of disclosing the background story was added to that of extended speeches. Most of the background story still appeared at the beginning of the play, but now it was broken into smaller pieces and shared among several characters. Although the absence of long speeches in this method seemed to provide plays with a more plausible appearance of everyday reality, its initial use was somewhat simple by current standards. A typical instance involved an opening scene in which two servants perform routine household duties while gossiping about their employer. This type of opening was so widespread in nineteenth-century realistic drama that it came to be called the below-stairs scene because it almost always involved servants, whose working quarters were located downstairs.
Ibsen used a refined variation of this method in the opening scene of The Wild Duck, where Pettersen, the old family servant, and Jensen, a hired helper, observe, explain, and otherwise account for a dinner party that’s happening off stage at the same time. The parallel off-stage scene lends plausibility to the on-stage discussion of background story, but there is another refinement as well. Unlike other early realistic playwrights, Ibsen seldom treated his secondary characters as simple dramatic functionaries. He provided them with a distinct character and with an intense personal interest in the plot. Both Pettersen and Jensen are distinctive personalities, and they have personal reasons for gossiping about the people in the other room.
In his later work, Ibsen refined his method. Instead of revealing so much of the background story in the early scenes, he began to distribute it in fragments throughout the entire play. Scholars call this the retrospective method because the on-stage action moves forward while the past unfolds backward, retrospectively. The key to its effective use was to keep from revealing the most significant background information until as late as possible in the action when it was most effective. As time went on, Ibsen and other early modern dramatists—Anton Chekhov, August Strindberg, and George Bernard Shaw—became adept at this method. They learned how to distribute the background story in bits and pieces throughout their plays, and they knew where and how to place the information so that its disclosure would be as dramatic as possible. In their best works, no single piece of background story is revealed until it is of maximum service to the action—in other words, until it has maximum impact on the characters. The past unfolds one small fact at a time with a skillful sense of theatrical timing.
The retrospective method was actually the rediscovery of a historical model that had remained for the most part unused for almost 2,400 years. Few dramatists ever handled it better than Sophocles did in Oedipus Rex. The plot of this play is a murder mystery told retrospectively. A detective (Oedipus) searching for a murderer inquires into his past and step-by-step discovers to his horror that the criminal turns out to be himself. In spite of its early date of composition, Oedipus Rex remains an excellent example of retrospective technique. Both Oedipus Rex and The Wild Duck are models of background story craftsmanship that reward patient analysis.
Modern Technique
Beginning in the 1940s, certain forward-thinking authors began to push the limits of the retrospective method. They did this by concealing the background story so that audiences had a difficult time even detecting its presence. This new approach might be called deep background story. Audiences were perplexed by these unorthodox plays. Without knowing the past it was next to impossible for anyone to know what was going on except the actors, and they were often as perplexed as the audience was. The early playwrights of Theatre of the Absurd—Edward Albee, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genêt, and Harold Pinter—were skilled at crafting plays with deep background stories. In their plays and in those of many like-minded dramatists, the background story is concealed so that it is almost impossible to uncover without a great deal of detective work.
Appearances to the contrary, plays must have a past of some kind. Even the absurdists and their followers could not abandon need for it altogether. Critics were fond of attributing the unusual moods in these plays to intellectual factors like the “illogical and purposeless nature of existence.” What the absurdists did was to rediscover the entertainment value of being cryptic. Curiosity and attention can he heightened if the audience is not allowed in on the secret. Mysterious undertones are created when the background story is withheld, a technique used by August Strindberg in The Ghost Sonata in 1907 and by Edgar Allen Poe as early as 1841 in his short stories.
Absurdist plays and their stylistic relatives needed a new approach to acting and production to meet the challenge of expressing the hidden undertones that were their hallmark. Talented young directors, actors, and designers developed innovative performance techniques suitable for these unusual works. Now that we have observed the background story technique of the absurdists in use for over a generation, we understand that there was no magic involved in what they were doing. Deep background story is a radical extension of the retrospective method employed by early realistic playwrights and even before. The main difference lies in limiting the quantity of background story and then disclosing what is left of it by means of intricate, complicated hints instead of by frank narration. To perform such plays, actors and directors need to pay close attention to two important factors. They must first employ patient and imaginative detective work during the analytical stages of rehearsal to expose every last ounce of background information. Second, they should use meticulous application of tempo, rhythm, and mood in production to illuminate every veiled hint and casual allusion that these plays depend on for their effects. What cannot be spoken must be acted out through the subtle interplay of facial and bodily adjustments.
The plays of Albee, Beckett, Genêt, and Pinter may have been perplexing at first, but it is instructive to remember that for similar reasons the plays of Ibsen, Chekhov, and Strindberg were also difficult for their contemporaries to understand. Ibsen felt compelled to provide detailed stage directions, and Strindberg wrote explanatory prefaces to help actors understand their then-unconventional plays. We know that Chekhov’s plays were also misunderstood when they were produced. They required the talent of Stanislavski with considerable assistance from Nemirovitch-Dantchenko to uncover and communicate the background stories in his plays.
IDENTIFICATION
Agreeing that plays require background story, of what does it consist? Background story takes on several forms: events, character descriptions, and feelings. Which is most important is determined by the nature of the play, the characters, and the situations in the play.
Events
A background story event is something noteworthy that happened to a character in the past, something vital. Past events are always important because they provide the source material for the on-stage conflicts. Here are some background passages that contain important past events. In Streamers, Sergeant Cokes boasts, “I told ’em when they wanted to send me back [to Vietnam] I ain’t got no leukemia; they wanna check it. They think I got it. I don’t think I got it.” The fateful event here is Cokes’s lying about his illness so that he could be allowed to return to the war. Really, they knew about his illness but sent him back to Vietnam anyway. Two crucial past events are disclosed in Mama Younger’s announcement to her son Walter in A Raisin in the Sun, “Son—do you know your wife is expecting another baby?” The surprises for Walter are that Ruth is pregnant and that his wife didn’t tell him about it. Another example is Hjalmar Ekdal’s confession in The Wild Duck that his father “considered” suicide when he was sent to jail. Hjalmar says to Gregers melodramatically, “When the sentence of imprisonment was passed—he had the pistol in his hand.” In Oedipus Rex when Oedipus asks who found him as an infant, the Corinthian Messenger discloses a momentous past event, “It was another shepherd gave you to me.” At this moment Oedipus finds out that he is not the son of Polybus and Merope as he thought. In Mother Courage, the Recruiter reveals an important past event when he says to the Sergeant, “The general wants me to recruit four platoons by the twelfth.” The fact that the General will have him shot if he doesn’t enlist ninety men by the end of the week explains why the Recruiter doesn’t show much sympathy dealing with recruits later in the play. Sally says to her mother, Lorraine, in A Lie of the Mind, “Right then I knew what Jake had in mind.” “What?” asks Lorraine. “Jake had decided to kill him.” Background stories are composed of pivotal events like these.
Again, the caution is that readers should not always take characters’ descriptions of past events at face value. It’s not that characters lie; they just tell their own versions of the truth as they see it. Even a lie told as a truth, however, can be revealing if it is studied with care. In Hjalmar Ekdal’s scene discussed in the first paragraph of this section, his accidental use of the word “considered” instead of “attempted” when he speaks about his father’s experience is revealing. For one thing, an attempted suicide is far different from a considered suicide, which implies a kind of cowardice. Moreover, even though the event was real enough, it is not as important as the selfish use Hjalmar makes of it at this moment in the play. His purpose in confessing the event to Gregers is not to gain sympathy for his father but to express how he suffered from his father’s social disgrace. This is also a useful example of how background story can provide important information about other dimensions of the play.
Character Descriptions
Recalling the events of the past leads to a concern with the characters involved in those events. In Tartuffe, Orgon offers this description of his daughter’s suitor: “I had promised you to Valere, but apart from the fact that he’s said to be a bit of a gambler, I suspect him of being a free thinker.” Orgon is disclosing his evaluation of a character in the past. Horatio reveals to Hamlet his recollection of King Hamlet’s character: “I saw him once; he was a goodly king.” Joseph Surface receives this admiring description from Sir Peter Teazle in The School for Scandal: “Joseph is indeed what a youth should be—everyone in the world speaks well of him.” Speaking to Gregers Werle, Dr. Relling says of Lieutenant Ekdal in The Wild Duck: “The old lieutenant has been an ass all his days.” Willy Loman recalls his brother Ben in Death of a Salesman: “There was the only man I ever met who knew all the answers.” Mama Younger in A Raisin in the Sun recalls her deceased husband, “God knows there was plenty wrong with Walter Younger—hard-headed, mean, kind of wild with women—plenty wrong with him. But he sure loved his children.” In Angels in America, Roy Cohn listens to Joe Pitt explaining why he cannot move to Washington, D.C. with his wife:
JOE
The pills were something she started when she miscarried or … no, she took some before that. She had a really bad time at home, when she was a kid, her home was really bad. I think a lot of drinking and physical stuff. She doesn’t talk about it, instead she talks about … the sky falling down, people with knives hiding under sofas. Monsters. Mormons. Everyone thinks Mormons aren’t supposed to behave that way, but we do. It’s not lying, or being two-faced. Everyone tries very hard to live, up to God’s strictures, which are very … um …
Character descriptions in the background story often reveal as much about the speaker as they do about the person being remembered.
Feelings
Characters reveal their past feelings in a variety of ways. When, in The Wild Duck, Hjalmar Ekdal’s father went to prison for fraud, it was also an unpleasant time for Hjalmar: “I kept the blinds drawn down over both my windows. When I peeped out I saw the sun shining as if nothing had happened. I could not understand it. I saw people going along the street, laughing and talking about indifferent things. I could not understand it. It seemed to me that the whole of existence must be at a standstill—as if under an eclipse.” To which Gregers Werle adds, “I felt that too, when my mother died.” In Happy Days Winnie expresses her gladness about three memorable events in her past: “My first ball! (long pause) My second ball! (long pause, close eyes) My first kiss!” In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman tells Linda how he has felt when traveling alone on the road: “I get so lonely—especially when business is bad and there’s nobody to talk to. I get the feeling that I’ll never sell anything again.” Paddy, the sentimental Irish stoker in The Hairy Ape, remembers how happy he felt being at sea when he was young: “A warm sun on the clean decks. Sun warming the blood of you, and wind over the miles of shiny green ocean like strong drink to your lungs.” The frustration of Walter Younger’s past expresses itself through sense impressions in A Raisin in the Sun: “Sometimes it’s like I can see the future stretched out in front of me—just plain as day. The future, Mama. Hanging over there at the edge of my days. Just waiting for me—a big, looming blank space—full of nothing.” Doaker speaks about his niece, Berniece, to Boy Willie in The Piano Lesson: “She still got [her husband] Crawley on her mind. He been dead three years but she still holding on to him. She need to go out here and let one of those fellows grab a whole handful of whatever she got. She act like it done got precious.” Lorraine’s past feelings of despair about her husband’s departure are the subject of these remarks to her daughter, Beth, in A Lie of the Mind:
LORRAINE
Wonder? Did I ever wonder? You know a man your whole life. You grow up with him. You’re almost raised together. You go to school on the same bus together. You go through tornadoes together in the same basement. You go through a war together. You have babies together. And then one day he just up and disappears into thin air. Did I ever wonder? Yeah. You bet your sweet life I wondered. But you know where all that wondering got me? Nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. Because here I am. Alone. Just the same as though he’d never even existed.
Past feelings expressed through the background story are also valuable for beginning to understand character.
Combining Events, Character Descriptions, and Feelings
To learn how past events, character descriptions, and feelings work together in longer passages of dialogue, we will consider three examples. The first and third passages use traditional straightforward narration, the second uses the retrospective method. As we said earlier, Hamlet falls into the class of play in which background story appears in long passages early in the action. The murder of King Hamlet is the single most important fact of the background story. In 1,5 the Ghost reveals to Hamlet the circumstances surrounding this event in several prolonged speeches. Background story in this scene is a seamless merging of past events, feelings, and character descriptions. The Ghost begins by disclosing his suffering in purgatory ever since his death. Again, background story is underlined.
GHOST
I am thy father’s spirit,
Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confin’d to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purg’d away.
In the next 11 lines he describes in sensory terms how Hamlet would feel if he knew what his father has suffered.
GHOST
But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood.
Now the Ghost discloses that he was murdered, which is the pivotal event of the background story. He adds his personal feeling that blood ties and incest made the crime even worse.
List, List, O, List!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love—
HAMLET
O God!
GHOST
Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
HAMLET
Murder!
GHOST
Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.
A few lines later, the Ghost picks up the thread of the events once again.
GHOST
Now, Hamlet, hear;
’Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard
A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forged process of my death
Rankly abused; but know, thou noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father’s life
Now wears his crown.
HAMLET
O my prophetic soul!
My uncle!
The Ghost adds a character description of Claudius, condemning the incestuous relationship with Gertrude and the murder of his own brother.
GHOST
Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
With wicked witchcraft of his wits, with traitorous gifts—
O wicked wit and gifts that have the power
So to seduce—won to his shameful lust
The will of my most seeming virtuous queen.
Now follows 11 lines contrasting King Hamlet’s idealistic love of Gertrude with Claudius’s cynical lust.
O Hamlet, what a falling off was there, From me, whose love was of that dignity That it went hand in hand even with the vow I made to her in marriage; and to decline Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor To those of mine!
The next 16 lines are a vivid account of the murder itself.
But soft! methinks I scent the morning air. Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard, My custom always of the afternoon, Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole, With juice of cursed hebona in a vial, And in the porches of mine ears did pour The leprous distillment; whose effect Holds such an enmity with blood of man That swift as quicksilver it courses through The natural gates and alleys of the body; And with a sudden vigour it doth posset And curd, like eager droppings into milk, The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine; And a most instant tetter bark’d about, Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust, All my smooth body.
Seven lines of religious feelings develop from these.
Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand
Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch’d;
Cut off even in the blossom of my sin,
Unhousl’d, disappointed, unanel’d;
No reck’ning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.
O, Horrible! Horrible! most horrible!
The Ghost concludes the scene by challenging Hamlet to revenge his murder. The background story in this scene has been disclosed by one character during several long narrative speeches composed of a classic blend of events, feelings, and character descriptions.
In A Raisin in the Sun, several characters disclose the past retrospectively and in small fragments. This scene between Walter and his wife, Ruth, occurs near the beginning of the play. It centers on Walter’s scheme for buying a liquor store. His project will require $10,000 from his father’s life insurance. Intermingled in the argument between Walter and Ruth are background story events, character descriptions, and feelings.
WALTER
You want to know what I was thinking ’bout in the bathroom this morning?
RUTH
No.
WALTER
How come you always got to be so pleasant?
RUTH
What is there to be pleasant ’bout?
WALTER
You want to know what I was thinking ’bout in the bathroom or not?
RUTH
I know what you was thinking ’bout.
(ignoring her) ’Bout what me an’ Willy Harris was talking about last night.
RUTH
(immediately—a refrain) Willy Harris is a good-for-nothing loud mouth.
WALTER
Anybody who talks to me has got to be a good-for-nothing loud mouth, ain’t he? And what you know about who is just a good-for-nothing loud mouth? Charlie Atkins was just a “good-for-nothing loud-mouth” too, wasn’t he? When he wanted me to go into the dry-cleaning business with him. And now—he’s grossing a hundred thousand dollars a year. A hundred thousand dollars a year! You still call him a loud mouth?
RUTH
(bitterly) Oh, Walter Lee.
(She folds her head on her arms over the table.)
WALTER
(rising and coming over to her and standing over her) You tired, ain’t you? Tired of everything. Me, the boy, the way we live—this beat up hole—everything. Ain’t you? So tired—moaning and groaning all the time, but you wouldn’t’ do nothing to help, would you? You couldn’t be on my side that long for nothing could you?
RUTH
Walter, please leave me alone.
A man needs for a woman to back him up …
RUTH
Walter—
WALTER
Mama would listen to you. You know she listen to you more than she do me and Bennie. She think more of you, too. All you have to do is just sit down with her when you drinking your coffee one morning and talking ’bout things like you do—(He sits down beside her and demonstrates graphically what he thinks her methods and tone should be.)—you just sip your coffee, see, and say easy like that you been thinking ’bout that deal Walter Lee is so interested in, ‘bout the store, and all, and sip some more coffee, like what you saying ain’t really that important to you—and the next thing you know, she be listening good and asking you questions and when I come home—I can tell her the details. This ain’t no fly-by-night proposition, baby. I mean we got it figured out, me and Willy and Bobo.
RUTH
(with a frown) Bobo?
WALTER
Yeah. You see, this little liquor store we got in mind cost seventy-five thousand and we figured the initial investment on the place be ’bout thirty thousand, see. That be ten thousand each. Course, there’s a couple of hundred you got to pay so’s you don’t spend the rest of your life just waitin’ for them clowns to let your license get approved—
You mean graft?
WALTER
(frowning impatiently) Don’t call it that. See there, that just goes to show you what women understand about the world. Baby, don’t nothing happen in this world ’less you pay somebody off!
RUTH
Walter, leave me alone! (She raises her head and stares at him vigorously—then says, more quietly.) Eat your eggs, they gonna be cold.
WALTER
(straightening up from her and looking off) That’s it. There you are. Man say to his woman: I got me a dream. His woman say: eat your eggs. (sadly, but gaining in power) Man say: I got to take hold of this here world, baby! And a woman will say: Eat your eggs and go to work. (passionately now) Man say: I got to change my life. I’m choking to death, baby! And his woman say—(in utter anguish as he brings his fists down on his thighs)—Your eggs is getting cold!
RUTH
(softly) Walter, that ain’t none of our money.
WALTER
(not listening at all or even looking at her) This morning, I was lookin’ in the mirror and thinking about it … I’m thirty-five years old; I been married eleven years and I got a boy who sleeps in the living room—(very, very quietly) and all I got to give him is stories about how rich people live …
Eat your eggs, Walter.
WALTER
Damn my eggs … damn all the eggs that ever was!
RUTH
Then go to work.
WALTER
(looking at her) See—I’m trying to talk to you ’bout myself—(shaking his head with the repetition)—and all you can say is eat them eggs and go to work.
RUTH
(wearily) Honey, you never say anything new. I listen to you every day, every night, and every morning, and you never say nothing new. (shrugging) So you would rather be Mr. Arnold than be his chauffeur. So—I would rather be living in Buckingham Palace.
WALTER
That’s just what is wrong with the colored women in this world.… Don’t understand about building their men up and making ’em feel like they somebody. Like they can do something.
RUTH
(dryly, but to hurt) There are colored men who do things.
WALTER
No thanks to the colored woman.
Well, being a colored woman, I guess I can’t help myself none.
Modern realistic treatment of background story is calculated to create the illusion of everyday life. This means that characters must be able to talk about the past while simultaneously advancing the story occurring on stage. Disclosing the past in this way does provide a surface feeling of credibility, but there is a tradeoff. Since the past is mixed up with the present, it’s more difficult to distinguish between them during the rapid unfolding of the action, not to mention during the process of script analysis itself. This is further complicated by the fact that, in the retrospective method, unspoken implications and inferences play a much larger role than they do in historical narrative technique. It was said earlier in this chapter that clustering the background story into long speeches permits the writer to focus more attention on the present unfolding action. This is a substantial writing benefit for plays in which the action is as wide-ranging as it is in Angels in America. It may be the reason Tony Kushner elected to use the traditional method of revealing background story throughout most of the play, as in this passage of past events, character description, feelings, and sense impressions between the Angel and Prior. They are speaking of God’s disappearance from heaven.
ANGEL
He began to leave US!
Bored with His Angels, Bewitched by Humanity,
In Mortifying imitation of You, his least creation,
He would sail off on Voyages, no knowing where
Quake follows wake,
Absence follows absence:
Nasty Chastity and Disorganization:
Loss of Libido, Protomatter Shortfall:
We are His Functionaries; It is
BEYOND US:
Then
April 18, 1906.
In That Day:
The Great San Francisco Earthquake. And
also …
ANGEL
In that day:
PRIOR
(Simultaneously) On April 18, 1906 …
ANGEL
Our Lover of the Million Unutterable Names, The Aleph Glyph from Which all Words Descend: The King of the Universe:
HE Left …
PRIOR
Abandoned.
ANGEL
And did not return.
We do not know where HE has gone. HE may never …
And bitter, Cast-off, We wait, bewildered;
Our finest houses, our sweetest vineyards,
Made dreary and barren, missing Him.
(Coughs)
PRIOR
Abandoned.
ANGEL
Yes.
The lesson to be learned about background story is that actors, directors, and designers need to exercise special attentiveness during analysis and in performance and that audiences need to exercise attentive listening.
SUMMARY
We have been reviewing the topic of background story, noting how it is done and studying the adjustments playwrights have made to accommodate particular needs. We have seen that, since the background story is crowded with significant information, it is essential to know as much about it as possible and sometimes in exhausting detail. Another important part of learning about background story is understanding that for theatre artists it involves much more than the dry theoretical term exposition. Most readers who have followed the discussion so far should see that background story in plays is as dramatic as on-stage action. Often it is more so.
QUESTIONS
Technique Is the background story disclosed in long speeches? In short statements? In subtle hints and veiled allusions? How reliable are the characters who disclose the background story? Is the background story disclosed near the beginning of the play? Throughout the entire play? Any disclosed near the end of the play? How much background story is there compared to on-stage action? Where does the action of the play begin in relation to the background story? In relation to the end of the action?
Identification What specific events are disclosed in the background story? How long ago did they occur? What is the original chronology of events? In what order are the events disclosed in the play? Besides events, are there any character descriptions in the background story? Any feelings or sense impressions?
Summary Write a complete report of each character’s background story. Provide a complete report of the background story as told by all the characters.
POSTSCRIPT FOR ACTION ANALYSIS
After Action Analysis, search for the play’s Seed, or Subject, hidden within the background story. How does the Seed influence the background story? Why did the playwright choose this specific background story from the whole range of other possibilities? How would the play be different with another background story? In what way does connecting the Seed with the background story help the play grow and develop?