Using Multiple Pasts

THE PLAYWRITING SEMINARS > STRUCTURE > TIME > FLASHBACKS > PAST-PAST >

'I recall a time when for me theatre was an escape, a place where new worlds better than the real one could be imagined and built . . .. Then I discovered Ntozake Shange, Woodie King and Joseph Papp; Douglas Turner Ward, Barbara Ann Teer, Amiri Baraka [Leroi Jones] -- folks carving out new spaces, or reclaiming old ones but on new terms, their terms. Suddenly theatre wasn't a means of escape, but a viable tool for confronting issues and causing change to occur.'

-- Ricardo Khan

Adding a Third Level of Time involving the use of Multiple Pasts is the most complicated Time Structure going.

Charles Fuller is practically alone in trying Multiple Pasts -- and pulling it off. In A SOLDIER'S PLAY, he uses three levels of time to tell the tale . . .

Present
The central character, Davenport, speaks to us as the Narrator -- in the present, or at least some time after the events of the play's Suspense Plot.
Past
The murder investigation the Narrator's been sent to run.
Past-past
The murder and events leading to it. This " Past-past" runs through the play and is made up of a series of Flashbacks-within-Flashbacks. It's a cinch in production and even in reading. It's only the theory that seems complicated.

This 3-layer business was too complicated for Hollywood, so the Present was lopped off for the film version of A SOLDIER'S PLAY. Narrators aren't greeted with open arms in Lotusland anyway. And this transformed his thought-provoking Resolution into a Happy Ending. Now, there's a tradition worth thinking about.

And then there's that beast of indeterminate time . . .

Hyper-Time

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