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DRAMATURGY 7 1
back! Lady in the Lake contained a flash-back sequence in which one of the characters told a story which was dramatized as a flash back. This made it necessary to reorient the audience first from the interior flash back to the major flash back, and then from the major flash back to the regular story line.
Tricky but unnecessary. Avoid the flash back. It may look pretty, but it can do more harm than good. It's tricky. On the stage, in Death of a Salesman, the flash back was used so often that, although it appeared to have a positive effect on the audience, its use began to pall. The play could have been written in a straightforward style —with the first act in the distant past, the second act in the early past, and the third act in the immediate present. The flash backs were gaudy tricks that were impressive only because they were tricks. They added nothing to the basic quality of the play itself. Here again, too much emphasis was put on construction and form. And the only reason why the play was a popular success was that innate honesty, sincerity, and superior writing came through despite the flash backs.
In television, the flash back creates an additional problem. Because television plays are usually broken into two parts (for halfhour shows) and three parts (for hour shows) to accommodate the advertising commercials, the character narrating the flash back must be brought back at the end of each act and at the beginning of the following act. The breaks in time and sequence necessitated by the commercials make reorientation to the narrator an absolute essential.
Repetition
You may have noted in the foregoing section that the words "orient" and "reorient" were repeated time and again. This was done designedly. For a lack of orientation on the part of the audience makes only for confusion. That is why, at all times, they must be made fully aware of what is going on, why it is going on, who is involved in the goings-on, where the goings-on are taking place, how the goings-on affect each of the characters, and when the goings-on are taking place in time.