areten-thousand boxes of reel-to-reel tapes that he must listen to. Whereas a cassette tape can be sixty to one-hundred and twenty minutes in length, reel-to-reel tapes are hours long. The minute detail presented by the Attendant that the machine playing the tapes has no "fast forward" button, foreshadows that this process will take a very, very long time, and nothing the Person does or says (including heartfelt apologies) will change it. The Attendant's description of what awaits the Person would appear to represent the drama's climax, and it underlines the horror of the plot line:

Listening, word by word, to every lie you ever told while you were alive…Every ugly lie to every person, every single time, every betrayal, every lying thought, every time you lied to yourself, deep in your mind, we were listening, we were recording, and it's all in these tapes, ten thousand boxes of them, in your own words, one lie after the next, over and over until we're finished.

Flashback also intensifies the audience's reaction to the Person's situation—it appears at the end of the play in the form of the "first" lie:

Where have you been? Do you know I've been looking all over?…I went to Manny's! I went to the pharmacy! The school! I even called the police! Look at me…I'm shaking! Look at me—Look at me and tell me where you were! Tell me right now! (Silence. As the Person waits for the lying response…)

This dialogue must be from the Person's mother, as she mentions having gone to "the school." We can assume, then, that the Person's lying began very early, and the "punishment" that lies before him has only just begun. There seems to be no resolution, simply the nervousness of the Person as he listens to the first taped lie. In fact, because this accounting of endless lies will take a very long time, a resolution is impossible. Webster-Merriam online dictionary defines resolution as...

...the point in a literary work at which the chief dramatic complication is worked out.

It would appear that the only time the "complication" will be worked out is when the Person is finished listening to all of his lies.

Additional Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Rivera_(playwright)

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resolution

Jose Rivera's play, "Tape," only has one scene: it is a short, two-man play. The story's premise is that a man, "The Person," is meeting "The Attendant" and becoming acclimated to his new surroundings. The conversation is casual until the audience realizes that the Person is actually dead. In fact the structure of the play is based upon the death of the Person, the foreshadowing of what is to come, and the detailed elements of his "punishment."

Foreshadowing is:

Suggesting, hinting, indicating, or showing what will occur later in a narrative...

We do not, as the audience, know where the Person is, but it is either purgatory or hell. There is suffering in this place, which means it is not heaven. This an example of foreshadowing because we are told that there is suffering (though we don't know what it refers to) as the Attendant tells the Person:

We don't want to cause you any undue suffering.

"Undue" means unwarranted, so the Attendant is implying that there is suffering, but that they don't want to administer more than is deserved.

The most horrifying event, seemingly "hellish" in its presentation by the Attendant, is the fact that the Person will be spending a very, very long time listening to all the lies he has ever told in his life.

We know this will take an extremely long time because there are ten thousand boxes, of reel-to-reel tapes of his lies, and that the machine they will be using does NOT have a fast-foward button.

Listening, word by word, to every lie you ever told while you were alive…Every ugly lie to every person, every single time, every betrayal, every lying thought, every time you lied to yourself, deep in your mind, we were listening, we were recording, and it's all in these tapes, ten thousand boxes of them, in your own words, one lie after the next, over and over until we're finished.

It is this description that so powerfully outlines the "suffering" that lies ahead of the Person. Strangely, while the Attendant is extremely cordial and eager to please at the beginning of the play, he pulls absolutely NO punches when he lays everything out in front of the Person, so that man knows not just that there is a record of all he has done, but worse, that he will have to listen to it—relive it, all over again.

These are the events that mark the major elements in the play's structure.

Additional Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Rivera_(playwright)