How Plot Orders Events: Fiction/Drama Practice Test
•15 QuestionsIn the following original drama excerpt, a playwright arranges scenes so that the audience encounters events out of chronological order:
Scene I (Night, the bakery’s back room).
MARA: Don’t touch the till, Jonah. Not tonight.
JONAH: You think I’m still that boy.
MARA: I think the door remembers your hands.
(Outside, a siren rises and passes.)
JONAH: If the police come, it won’t be for stealing.
MARA: Then what will it be for?
JONAH: For what you asked me to do.
Scene II (Earlier that afternoon, the shop floor).
MARA: You’ll take the envelope to the river.
JONAH: It’s heavy.
MARA: It’s final.
JONAH: You said we were done with final things.
MARA: We are, after today.
(A CUSTOMER enters; MARA smiles too brightly.)
Scene III (Three years earlier, the same building before it was a bakery).
MARA: If you sign, you get the keys.
JONAH: And you get my silence.
MARA: I get your future.
JONAH: You always rename what you want.
Scene IV (Later that night, the alley behind the bakery).
(An envelope, torn, floats in a puddle. JONAH’s hands shake.)
MARA: You opened it.
JONAH: I had to know what I was carrying.
MARA: And now you know what you are.
JONAH: No—now I know what you are.
What is the primary function of the playwright’s scene ordering (beginning in the middle of the conflict, then moving to an earlier afternoon, then to a moment three years prior, before returning to the night)?
In the following original drama excerpt, a playwright arranges scenes so that the audience encounters events out of chronological order:
Scene I (Night, the bakery’s back room).
MARA: Don’t touch the till, Jonah. Not tonight.
JONAH: You think I’m still that boy.
MARA: I think the door remembers your hands.
(Outside, a siren rises and passes.)
JONAH: If the police come, it won’t be for stealing.
MARA: Then what will it be for?
JONAH: For what you asked me to do.
Scene II (Earlier that afternoon, the shop floor).
MARA: You’ll take the envelope to the river.
JONAH: It’s heavy.
MARA: It’s final.
JONAH: You said we were done with final things.
MARA: We are, after today.
(A CUSTOMER enters; MARA smiles too brightly.)
Scene III (Three years earlier, the same building before it was a bakery).
MARA: If you sign, you get the keys.
JONAH: And you get my silence.
MARA: I get your future.
JONAH: You always rename what you want.
Scene IV (Later that night, the alley behind the bakery).
(An envelope, torn, floats in a puddle. JONAH’s hands shake.)
MARA: You opened it.
JONAH: I had to know what I was carrying.
MARA: And now you know what you are.
JONAH: No—now I know what you are.
What is the primary function of the playwright’s scene ordering (beginning in the middle of the conflict, then moving to an earlier afternoon, then to a moment three years prior, before returning to the night)?