For the opening of educating Rita, Russell needs to entertain and interest his audience, however, he also needs to quickly introduce his characters: Frank, a university teacher in his early fifties, bored with his life and Rita, a badly educated hairdresser with a thirst for knowledge. Russell begins "Educating Rita" with Frank searching frantically in his bookcase, muttering the names of famous authors under his breath as he searches for what the audience imagines to be a book. However, to our surprise, Frank jubilantly pulls out a bottle of Whisky and pours himself a drink. This tells us that...
not give up. "Look at those tits" Frank, slightly embarrassed and shocked coughs and engrosses himself in looking at the admission papers again. This shows the contrast between Frank and Rita"s classes and backgrounds: Frank has probably never been approached like this before and being upper class doesn"t talk about anything to do with sex or nudity openly. Frank is also shocked about being asked such a question from a complete stranger.

Russell makes his opening interesting and entertaining with comedy.The audience is eager to see more and has a good idea of Frank and Rita"s characters.