TASK DEFINITION: You will be given a summary of a story. You need to create a question that can be answered from the story. You can create a question about characters, events, facts and beliefs, etc. Your question should be specific, try not to use pronouns instead of full names. As the stories are sometimes movie plots, they will contain actor names in parentheses. You should not use those names. Only use character names. Try to ask a question about all parts of the plot, not just the beginning.
PROBLEM: The biblical portion of the play, a retelling of the Visitation of the Shepherds, comes only after a longer, invented story that mirrors it, in which the shepherds, before visiting the holy baby outside in a manger, must first rescue one of their sheep that has been hidden in a cradle indoors by a comically evil sheep-stealing couple. Once they have discovered and punished the thieves, the storyline switches to the familiar one of the three shepherds being told of the birth of Christ by an angel, and going to Bethlehem to offer the true Child gifts.
At the start of the play, Coll, the first shepherd ("primus pastor") arrives in a field, invoking God in anachronistic terms (referring, as the shepherds will do throughout the play, to the life and death of Christ even though at this point of the play Christ has not yet been born) complaining about the (typically English) cold weather and about his poverty and the arrogance of local gentry. He begins by saying, "Lord, what these weders are cold! And I am ill happyed" which translates as "God, the weather is cold and I am ill prepared/clothed." Gib, the second shepherd, arrives without seeing Coll and complains first about the weather and then about the plight of married men, himself included, with bawdy speculation about the lives of men with more than one wife and advice to "young men of wooing" to "Be well war of weding" (wary of marriage). He paints a portrait of his wife as a loud, heavy-drinking, alternately abusive and sentimentally pious, whale-sized woman. "By him that died for us all, I would I had run til I had lost her!" at which point he is startled by Coll. They confer about where Daw, a third, young, lazy and mischievous, shepherd, has gotten to, at which point Daw arrives complaining about employers, hunger, and about recent floods which he compares to Noah's flood.
Mak, a local good-for-nothing and well-known thief, arrives and pretends to be a yeoman from a lord. Although they recognize him from the start, he insults and threatens them by saying that he will have them flogged. When they threaten him, he pretends not to have known who they were. Mak tries to gain sympathy from the shepherds by explaining how his wife is a lazy drunk who gives birth to too many children. Invoking Christ and Pontius Pilate, Mak agrees to camp with the shepherds, and feigns to lie down among them. However, once they have fallen asleep he casts a spell to make sure they will not wake up and then sneaks off to steal one of their sheep. He heads back to his cottage and trades insults with Gill, his wife, who firmly believes that Mak will be hanged for the theft and comes up with a plan for hiding the sheep - she will put it in an empty cradle and pretend that it is her newborn child, and that she is loudly, painfully in labor with its twin, so that the shepherds will quickly give up any search.
Mak sneaks back among the shepherds and pretends to awaken along with them. They head off to take account of their sheep while Mak heads home to prepare. With despair at their catastrophic ill fortune, the shepherds realize a sheep is missing and go to search Mak's house. They are initially fooled by Mak and Gill's ruse despite Gill going so far as to say that if she's lying she'll eat the child in her cradle (as she indeed plans to). The shepherds leave defeated, but realize that they have failed to bring any gifts to the "baby", and go back. When they remove the swaddling clothes they recognize their sheep, but decide not to kill Mak but instead roll him in canvas and throw him up and down, punishing him until they are exhausted.
When they have left Mak's cottage, the biblical story proper begins - the Angel appears and tells them to go to "Bedlam" (Bethlehem) to see the Christ child. They wonder at the event, chastising each other for their collective delay, and then go to the manger where Mary (Mother of Jesus) welcomes them and receives their praise for her mildness. They each address the Child in turn, beginning by praising His authority and His creation of all things in tones of reverence and awe, but each comically shifting mid-speech to cooing, gushing baby talk, since they are addressing an adorable baby, who Coll, Gib, and Daw respectively give "a bob of cherries," a bird, and a ball ("Have and play thee withal, and go to the tennis!") The shepherds rejoice at their salvation, all thoughts of hardship and complaint vanished, and leave singing in unison.

SOLUTION: What does the spell do that Mak puts on the shepherds?

PROBLEM: In The Mardi Gras Mystery, Nancy's boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, is invited to spend the vacation with Brian Seaton, an Emerson College friend. On their way to the Seaton Mansion, Brian stops at Warren Tyler's house to pick up his father, Bartholomew Seaton, and at the same time shows Ned a portrait of his late mother, Danielle Seaton, by the famous artist Lucien Beaulieu. The painting is in the possession of Mr. Tyler since he found it in a barn he bought.
The friends leave for Seaton Mansion or "The Bat Hallow". They wear fancy dress for the Mardi Gras celebration. Later that evening they go to the Silver Yacht Club. That night the portrait is stolen. The prime suspect is Mr. Seaton, who is supposed to have wanted his wife's portrait. All the evidence points to him: he was wearing a bat costume, like the thief, and he was missing at the crucial time, around 10:00 p.m.
Nancy cannot resist the challenge of the mystery. Her investigation leads to the French Quarter where she sees a woman who looks like Danielle except that her face is scarred. She is shocked and hypothesizes that Danielle could have survived the sailboat accident.
Later she finds out the woman is Mariel Devereaux, whose father Max is an art forger. Nancy concludes that Max used his daughter as a model for the painting because of her almost perfect resemblance to Danielle. He purposely left it in the barn so that it would be found by Mr. Tyler, Danielle's suitor and Bartholomew's rival. His plan was to steal his own painting and ransom it for a million dollars. The money was to pay for his daughter's plastic surgery.

SOLUTION: What kind of costume was Bartholomew Seaton wearing on the night of the Mardi Gras celebration?

PROBLEM: Shampoo is set during a 24-hour period in 1968, on the eve of a presidential election that would result in Richard Nixon's election to the American presidency. George Roundy is a successful Beverly Hills hairdresser, whose occupation and charisma have provided him the perfect platform from which to meet and have sex with beautiful women, including his current girlfriend Jill.
Despite this, George is dissatisfied with his professional life; he is clearly the creative star of the salon, but is forced to play second fiddle to Norman, the "nickel-and-diming" mediocre hairdresser who owns the place. He dreams of setting up his own salon business, but lacking the cash to do so, turns to wealthy lover Felicia and her unsuspecting husband Lester to bankroll him. George's meeting with Lester supplies a second secret for him to keep from his would-be benefactor: Lester's current mistress, Jackie, is George's former girlfriend, perhaps the most serious relationship he has ever had.
Lester, who assumes George is gay, invites him to escort Jackie to a Republican Party election night soiree, at which George finds himself in the same room as a number of present and former sexual partners. The principals adjourn to a posh counterculture party, and the night quickly descends into drugs, alcohol and sexual indulgence. In the film's dramatic climax, Lester and Jill happen upon George and Jackie having vigorous sex on a kitchen floor. Just before their identities are revealed, an impressed Lester exclaims: "That's what I call fucking! Am I right, or am I right?" When Jill recognizes the writhing couple, she throws a chair at them; as George backpedals, trying to placate Jill, Jackie sees him for the cad he is, and flees.
George realizes that Jackie is his true love and proposes to her. By then it is too late: Jackie announces that Lester is divorcing Felicia and taking Jackie to Acapulco. With Felicia gone, Jill gone, and now Jackie gone, the film thus pairs sexual revelation with George's deeper moral development, but ends bleakly for the protagonist, despite his epiphany.

SOLUTION:
Who does Lester invite George to escort to the Republican Party election night soiree?