in our previous video we started discussing exposition as the third item in the order of the play the beginning portion of dialogue that eases an audience into the world of the play I'm gonna spend just a few minutes now talking about some methods of exposition some of which have been around since the early days you know since the beginning of the playwriting process meaning centuries ago as well as methods that are still being used today the methods that I'm going to talk to you about would be the chorus which is a common way the narrator the character speaking directly to the audience and minor characters setting up the action through their dialogue with each other so let's talk about that the earliest and most used way of providing exposition would be that of utilizing a chorus and this started with the ancient Greek theater it looked a lot different when they did it then it does when we did it but when we use it today it's a take-off of what the ancient Greeks did a chorus of fifty people sometimes up to 100 would fire one into a stage onto a stage singing a song or providing a chant and in that song dodo dodo you know in a time not before our own and all this they would start talking about the events that might unfold in the the play the song or the chant kind of introduced you to the main character which the plight of one of the gods that might unfold in the storyline give you some hint as to what the lesson might be the message might be you know you learn a lesson about greed or jealousy or hatred and the pitfalls of one of these human flaws and that's how exposition in the early days began by the way when we write musicals today quite often we do the same thing it's a little bit more upbeat a little more fun you know where a chorus of people come on and they introduce you to the world of the play and maybe inside that corners are sprinkled some of the principal characters and in a few lyrics they introduce themselves and their dilemma and so forth by the end of that first big number which we had a lot of fun with we know who all the main players are so that's the modern day person you know there's an excellent play musical out there which became a movie in the 1980s many of you may have seen it it's called Little Shop of Horrors Little Shop of Horrors is a perfect example of what I'm talking about in modern time as well as what I'm talking about the ancient Greeks and here's why Little Shop of Horrors the format of that movie is very different it's very unique it's got the the doo-wop girls who live on Skid Row and they're kind of telling the story of a little nerdy plant store clerk a plant store worker and and they come on and they introduce all the main characters in their opening song and a couple of the main characters introduce themselves as part of that song as well that's exposition the beauty of Little Shop of Horrors if you are ever to look at it is that they patterned the movie the structure of the script after the ancient Greek tragedy they start to show off with the chorus they give you the principles it is a movie a story about you know our principal character giving in to greed and losing only hat as a result and the play has a tragic ending the movie changed it to a happy ending cuz that's the way they used to write things but it's kind of a spoof of the ancient Greek format so you can kind of cheat and get an understanding of how the Greek plays were written at the same time get a true understanding of what some of these items are most particularly position in the use of a chorus in providing exposition the next tool for exposition actually is my favorite as a director and that is the narrator I'll be perfectly honest when I was young well not even when I was in college I just used to hate the concept of a narrator I thought narrators man that's that's too much storytelling what the actors do it I I hated being in my English class or my literature class and eighth grade and I'm sure a lot of you've been there and then teacher has you opened up the book and they assign you a role and you were role in you neural I hate it when I was assigned the narrator none of us wanted to read the narrator and then I got older and I started directing plays and guess what the narrator is an awesome tool a narrator and there is you see they love the narrator a lot in modern to act plays is because the narrator is the quickest way to cut through time to cuff you time in space as a matter of fact the narrator didn't come on as his old-fashioned but say once upon a time this happened two years after that this happened seven years later this happened and here we are today in one breath they can give you 15 20 years of information where in the older days and an entire act they tried to do it realistically to the dialogue of the main players and so forth well no the narrator cut in and narrator can actually provide like a mini exposition for each scene by doing that coming on and Bam Bam Bam in four or five lines they they get us right up to speed and because they're Raiders are heavily used these days to provide exposition they are often nowadays given a persona they're often given a character traits a wonderful play that I used to tour with call Blood Brothers is a good example of this the principal characters I'm sorry the title characters are these two twins who were secretly parted at birth and if you believe in the Old English superstition that twins secretly parted will die a violent death when somebody reveals that they were twins that they were departed and the whole musical is dark and it's got a rock-and-roll theme to it you know you're trying to keep these two people apart who don't know they're brothers but they come best friends and all of this well there is a narrator who's telling that story and he does it in song and he does it in almost poetry and he's kind of the devil and faked all rolled up into one he was having a little bit too much of a good time telling this tragic story about two young man that you're just gonna fall in love with and the narrator becomes an awesome role to play as a matter of fact the narrator's the male lead the two brothers are the title characters but the male lead is that narrator and if you ever get to play that role I would love to someday play the role I played one of the brothers when I was younger but if I ever got to play the narrator and Blood Brothers oh man I'd I'd be ready to retire you know because narrators are now given persona narrators are quite often now one of the characters and sometimes they're a happy character but quite often they're a evil or a monstrous character and that's what makes them so much fun to play but narrators are a very valuable tool for exposition because narrators can cut through time and space in a matter of seconds instead of minutes and if you ever say to Act play that has a lot of information in it you're going to you're going to see that one of the characters is a narrator or the following one which is a character speaking directly to the audience which is the third tool of exposition I'll say it again one of the principal characters speaking directly to the audience so in a way that format has one of the principal characters serving a role similar to that of a narrator it's just that's character doing it and I think I mentioned this format and one of my other videos but Saved by the Bell whether it was a television show that my kids grew up watching therefore I was forced to watch that thing as the grown man but Saved by the Bell had it was a prime example of this this varied this tool of exposition it had the lead character his name was Zack speak to us quite often at the very an episode that character would look into the camera as the credits were finalizing and say oh you won't believe my world I was supposed to have be ready for this big algebra test today but no I I couldn't do it because my mom had this issue and this issue all last night I stayed up trying to help her now I'm going to pay the fiddler and mrs. so-and-so is gonna be very upset with me for not being prepared for this test let's see how that happens and then he goes to school and on an on occasion throughout the episode when something would happen he looked at the camera see I told you I told you that's not a narrator that's a character speaking directly to the audience but just like a narrator by doing so he can take us through time and space in just a matter of a few seconds and it's much easier for us to stay focused as audience members on the entertainment on the storyline on the message you know on the art and I guess the most common tool of exposition that we are familiar with today and you know and plays have been written saying last 100 150 years is to have the minor characters setting up the action through dialogue with each other you know some of the minor kick there's a play called Arsenic and Old Lace I referenced that in another video as well where the show opens up with a preacher who you only see in this early scene for about five pages or so talking to two cops you know who you always see one more time at the very end when they arrive to arrest the bad guy and they're having a gossip session and in their gossip session that they're having at this table inside this Victorian home they are gossiping about the various members of this family the two elderly sisters who who live in that home and their father who left them at home they used to be a mortician and did his work upstairs and you learn about their three nephews how one of them is deranged one of them is a drama critic the other ones on the run for murdering people and they gossip about all the principal characters and do that gossip session we learned about the principal characters so when those characters arrive enter into Stage four a scene we already know who they are so their dialogue pertains to a plotline it doesn't really have to pertain to them introducing themselves to us and most people are familiar with that the minor characters set up the dialogue I've been set up the action with their early dialogue that is a that's a valuable tool of exposition there's a movie out there called the other guys who flips this format and if you understand what they're doing then you understand what I'm providing to you in this lecture right now the other guys starts off with these two I think of Samuel Jackson Jackson and The Rock opening up a movie you know these two Hollywood superstars opening up a movie you know they're cops they're street cops or going after the bad guys the bad guys are now chasing down Mandir they're running through fire and they're shooting out the car windows and they're you know it's violent there's explosions and all this action going on and the bad guys chase them to the edge of a high-rise building they're up on a roof and they look down and all they see are some shrubs and they say aim for the shrubs you think we can do it and these guys jump to land on the shrubs you know what fourteen twenty stories high and that's supposed to save them we think okay it's going to be one of those kind of movies like that and they hit it splat they're dead then you go to their funeral or something like that and you have a couple of nerdy guys played by some other actors who are now going to take over their spot on the force and the movie is actually about film thus the title other guys now that is not the way exposition is usually set up you know but because the title is the other guys they used big-time actors who actually became who turned out to be big bit roles in that movie to set up the action so we look at the rock and we look at Samuel Jackson as superstar actors but in the movie they were just big players and that was kind of the Joe kind of the spoon but nonetheless it's setup and understanding of what the movie was going to be about so remember exposition is designed to give us an understanding of role of the play before the storyline ever starts to unfold and the reason they've been shortened and shortened over time is because our attention span has just gotten shorter again we went to television all of a sudden we were getting full storylines in 30 minutes or less that made it difficult for play writers and script writers and screenwriters you know for movies and so forth to do their work plan to get more creative and make the expositions far more entertaining than they used to be see some of the great plays have lengthy expositions and if you go to the one for the first time and you're looking at your watch because you know this has been going on for 10 minutes now 12 minutes there's nothing exciting happening I did a play called the foreigner which had a it was one of the funniest things you ever saw people are going around all over the community saying you've got to see this show you've got to see this it's the best show ever and then when you go the exposition was 25 minutes are you going okay this is this is okay but I don't get it and then after that first 25 minutes scene when the lights come back on BAM the comedy was on fire so even that was half of an act it was one scene in a two-act play and is a little bit long by today's standards think of yourself when you go on YouTube and you're surfing around all night so forth if you're like the rest of us you kind of put a little you're you have a topic that you want to research but then you look in the lower right hand corner and you say if it's if it's anywhere over three minutes or anywhere from five minutes I'm not watching it you know where do we usually don't look on something that's 15 20 minutes we we've gotten spoiled and we reduce our attention span playwrights understand that and that's why you see exposition having more creative attempts in the modern era thank you