we have been discussing the order of the play so far we've discussed the gathering of the audience which breaks into publicity as well as admitting and seeding and the transition which is the second part of the order of the play in this video we will talk about the third part of the order of the play which is known as exposition and exposition is that part in the order that actually pertains to the performance itself to the production itself live in front of the audience as a matter of fact exposition is the beginning portion of the play meaning the bidding beginning portion of the story the dialogue it's that early dialogue that is used to ease an audience into the plot and the theme and this sort of thing kind of have to look at exposition as being like background information kind of like the introduction of a book or the introduction of a speech or a paper or something like that I know if you've ever watched a play or definitely have watched a movie quite often we recognize exposition it's those early parts of the movie that we recognize as being educational all we are learning about the relationships between these two oh they are ex-lovers oh no this person just got out of prison oh this person hates that other one who's the older brother and you know you learn a lot of information about the relationships and the settings and so forth so that when the exposition is over all of the things that unfold in the plot line makes sense so exposition is the early portion of dialogue used to ease the audience into the world of the play expositions vary in length you know exposition in a play can be an entire act long it can be maybe just a song long which is in the case in a lot of musicals maybe it's just one line long depending on what is necessary for the playwright to give us the background information I'll be it usually if it's a line long it's a monologue it's it's a lengthy line but you know let's look at the first one an entire act long you know a lot of you are familiar with the fact that some plays are to act long x long and some plays are 3x long we also have one-act plays and so forth but the norm is 2x or 3x Shakespeare wrote 5 act plays they had much longer plays back in that day and back in the Greeks but by the modern standard a play is I know 2x long or 3x long which would you think would actually take more time to watch a two-act play or three act play what do you think you know most people just by the assumption and number would say Oh a three act play must be longer there to that plane that's not necessarily the case an act is not measured by by length you can have two 45-page acts totaling 90 pages in the script you could also have 330 page acts totally totally 90 pages in a script and by the way they're never perfect like that but you get my point an act is defined by its purpose not by a division and number two give it three equal blocks or something like that so in the older days in modern time in the early days of the modern era I'm talking I'm going back 100 150 years even it was quite common to see three act plays three act plays were very common when I was in high school it wasn't until about the early 1980s or so he started seeing more and more to act plays being written well why is that we see prior to the 1980s when we had three act plays the entire first act was devoted to exposition that entire portion of the play was designed to give us background information show the relationship between the characters and their environment their settings and so forth so that when the lights went up on the second act all the things that unfolded made sense to us because we had something to tie it to an entire act was spent for that now starting in the early 1980s playwrights started to notice what the rest of the world started notice and that was our attention spans were dwindling you know we want an instant gratification do you go back as far as the Greeks didn't bother them at all to sit there for four hours on a rock embedded in the side of a hill and watch a tragedy unfold four hours of that stuff I can't imagine it you can't imagine it but if you could take you back in time when there wasn't a newspaper there wasn't a television or a radio or internet or anything like that to occupy there to their thought process these lengthy plays were welcome then you know over time our attention spans dwindle what hurt the modern theater what made it go from 3 X 2 to X was a motion picture and television to be quite honest with you especially television because in the early days of motion picture they just kind of looked like plays on filming if you've seen the old black and white versions you'll know what I'm talking about they look like plays with the camera shots at a distance and all of this but television came around and we had like the honeymooners and I Love Lucy and things like this and all of a sudden in our living room we can get a full beginning middle and end in less than 30 minutes a 30 minute sitcom - the commercials in the credits 24 25 26 minutes he had a full beginning middle and an end and that was that made us happy and the exposition in these sitcoms even today are usually a minute and a half long they're the first little scene prior to the first commercial you know where something unfolds in that first little bitty scene and you know when we get back from commercial you know the entire plotline is going to be our main characters wiggle out of that dilemma which took place that first scene that first scene was exposition so we can exposition and and and and the body the the body of the play and the date of whoa you know the conclusion of a play all within 30 minutes so when we go to the theater we don't want to sit through 30 minutes of exposition that kind of comes across as boring to us it's it back in the days when these shows were written because audience understood audiences understood that format but now we want it right away so they have gone to the to act format and they try to get exposition in it maybe one scene or just a few pages or something like that so they can jump right to you know the entertaining qualities of the of the play so yeah they vary in length expositions can be like I said a full act a full song or maybe even a full line often in a two-act play they break the first act up into two scenes and the format is to give it to us and in two scenes so the exposition of a play introduces the play to the audience and tells the audience what is going on in the next video I'm going to talk to you about various ways in which playwrights and indeed you know the characters provide exposition for our audiences thank you