Flashbacks

Flashbacks are a construction that is often used in movies, novels, and short stories. It is a technique that allows the author to fill in the background of the characters, which ultimately makes the present moment more complex and more detailed. This gives the audience information they had not been previously aware of. In a play, this construction of flashbacks is a lot more difficult to pull off as the players are in the same present moment as is the audience. So how does a playwright provide background information? Often this is offered in the dialog of the characters, but supplying these details can considerably slow down the pace of the play, which can, in turn, bore the audience. So in As Bees in Honey Drown, Beane employs a different technique to fill in the gaps, to provide clues in order that the audience might solve the mysteries...