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Advice for teachers -
Drama

Unit 3 - Area of Study 1: Devising and presenting ensemble performance

Outcome 1

Develop and present characters within a devised ensemble performance that goes beyond a representation of real life as it is lived.

Examples of lear​ning activities

  • Example icon for advice for teachers
    Use research, improvisation and editing to explore the conventions associated with three drama practitioners who do not seek to re-create real life as it is lived.
  • Example icon for advice for teachers
    Using the state of blindness as a stimulus, explore how different drama practitioners or performance styles create actor-audience relationships.
  • Explore ways to incorporate production areas such as lighting and sound into a performance in order to enhance the dramatic elements of mood, tension, climax and conflict. For example, using the stimulus of being lost in a forest: Gothic theatre's use of lighting and sound to create the supernatural and to evoke suspense; Film Noir's use of musical underscoring to heighten mood; Robert Wilson's use of flowing lighting like a musical score.
  • Example icon for advice for teachers
    Research the expressive skills and performance skills associated with different drama practitioners and performance styles, such as German Expressionism, circus and Meyerhold.
Example icon for advice for teachers 

Detailed example 1

Creating eclectic theatre

Students complete the following activities:

  1. Research the conventions associated with three drama practitioners who do not seek to re-create real life as it is lived.
  2. Select one of the drama practitioners and use their conventions to improvise a short scene exploring a conflict in a shopping mall.
  3. Re-create this scene two more times using the conventions of the two other drama practitioners. Now there are three separate scenes.
  4. Edit this work into one scene that merges key conventions from each of the three drama practitioners.
  5. Present the final eclectic theatre scene. 

Example icon for advice for teachers 

Detailed example 2

Actor-audience relationship

Students use the state of blindness to explore how different drama practitioners or performance styles create actor-audience relationships. They complete the following activities:

  1. Brainstorm what it might be like to be blind.
  2. Improvise using blindfolds to experience the state of blindness.
  3. Create a scene that conveys the state of blindness. The scene should explore how actor-audience relationships can be constructed according to use of space, intended effect and audience manipulation.
  4. Experiment with conventions associated with different drama practitioners and performance styles. For example, Bertolt Brecht's breaking the fourth wall and didactic message; Antonin Artaud's assaulting the senses and merging of the actor-audience relationship through involving the audience; Peter Brooke's use of space and positioning of the audience beyond conventional theatre spaces. 

Example icon for advice for teachers 

Detailed example 3

Expressive skills and performance skills

Using the stimulus of a bullying incident, brainstorm a list of characters that might be present at the moment of the bullying (witnesses, a bunch of friends, an innocent bystander, the perpetrator, the victim, etc.).

Select a character and create three freeze frames depicting the moments before, during and after the bullying incident. Re-work the freeze frames, applying different performance styles to the characters' expressive skills and performance skills. For example: German Expressionism – over exaggerated facial expressions and gesture accentuating the grotesque situation.

The freeze frames can be brought to life to explore voice, movement and timing.