Importance of Status Quo for Back Story in Plays

Video Transcript

"STEVE CAVERNO: Hi, I'm Steve Caverno on behalf of Expert Village. And today, I'll be talking to you about developing your plot. Now we're going to start to talk about the status quo. What is the status quo? Status quo is how the situation is at the beginning of the play. You're never going to come in at the beginning of everything--although your play's not going to start at the beginning of time. Something's going to happen before your play starts. You're not going to start with the egg, you're not going to start with the chicken. So, at that point, fathers who already have children, people who already have relationship established, they might already be married. So, at that point, we're going to have to reveal the relationship. So, in Romeo and Juliet, there's already a feud going on. At one point, the Capulets and the Montagues lived in peace and then something happened to change that peace. At the beginning of the play, Romeo was in love with Rosaline. And then she spurned his love and he's down and dumped, he's depressed about it. Juliet is being suited by Paris and her parents are pushing her to marry this guy. And so, at the beginning of the play, we already have conflict rich situations. We're just waiting for something to jump start us into the plot of the story. So, that's what status quo is, it's where we start. There's not necessarily nothing going on at the status quo. It's just that things haven't been propelled into motion. And that's what we'll talk about in the next series."