Flashbacks

THE PLAYWRITING SEMINARS > STRUCTURE > TIME > FLASHBACKS >

'The play for me was so much about intermission, the terrible canyon between the two acts, and the film [adaptation] looks for what was in that canyon.'

-- Jon Robin Baitz

We're all wiser now. Flashbacks in Film and Theatre happen without warning, and often without clear verbal or visual clues about how far back we've gone in time. Occasionally, you'll still see a film flashing one of those "Five Years Later" titles at you, but not in the theatre.

Playwrights hang their hats on Exposition and the context of the scene to do this job for them. A Scene Breakdown Page can help make clear what you're up to, though you can't rely on audiences to remember any of this even if you've put it in their programs. Besides, they're sitting in the dark while your scenes go whizzing by.

A Rule of sorts: Most playwrights put Flashbacks in chronological order. They interweave those scenes in the present with these flashbacks from the past, but each set of scenes moves chronologically through its own time -- present or past. And the exception to The Rule: The first flashback in M. BUTTERFLY -- which is really a Teaser Point of Attack -- but then things settle down to the usual order.