Listen to part of a conversation between a student and his French literature professor. Hi, Glenn, I received you notes saying you didn\'t want to act in the play, Right? I think I\'d probably ruin the whole thing. I mean, the idea of performing in French in front of an audience just makes me very uncomfortable. Just thinking about it makes me panic. I can understand that acting isn\'t for everyone, and the whole purpose of these little end of semester events is that they be fun and enjoyable for everyone. Maybe there\'s some other way you could participate. Could I do something on the technical end help with building the set? You know, like paint some scenery and maybe also work the spotlights. Well, we don\'t have a budget to make any fancy sets and the lighting is taken care of by the theater department staff. Even the costumes won\'t require much effort. We just usually borrow whatever\'s available from other productions. But I have come up with something else I think you\'d like doing. Okay, so the play is going to be performed in French and while some of the people who attend these performances are either fluent French speaker or learning French others are not. Many people come, mainly to support their friends. Since we usually perform around graduation time we also get lots of parents and grandparents who attend, and a number of them don\'t understand any French. Right? So I thought that for the benefit of, well, everyone really. just because someone understands French doesn\'t necessarily mean they\'re familiar with the play we\'re doing Cyrano de Bergerac Anyway, I thought we should include a synopsis of the play. You know, in the printed program we\'ll be handing to people as they enter the auditorium. A synopsis? Yeah this summary doesn\'t have to be long, just something we can fit in the program. I think I can handle that. But, we\'re just doing two scenes from the play the one where the main character, Cyrano, talks about how ugly his nose is and the one where Cyrano speaks to Roxanne on behalf of his friend. You know when Roxanne\'s standing on the balcony and can only hear Cyrano not see him. So should I summarize the whole play, or just the scenes we\'re performing? Well, what I do is I\'d focus only on the scenes we\'re performing. Just give an overview of what happens. Oh, let me take that back. The audience also need to know a bit about what\'s already happened that Cyrano and his friend both love Roxanne. Why Cyrano so willing to help his friend by speaking on his behalf? Remember, Roxanne has already told Cyrano that she loves his friend and although Cyrano loves her, he also respects her feelings. So you\'ll need to cover that but just as background, background leading up to the two Scenes we\'re doing.