GCSE Unit 2

Completing your portfolio

Remember the number of words given is only a maximum and most of your marks will be based on the practical work that you have already done.

If you have any problems writing your portfolio you can contact Mr Wells or Mr Lewis by email.

UNIT 2

Exploration of a play

TASK 1: The response phase (AO1)

Students should capture on a maximum of two sheets of A4 paper (ie four sides, 500 – 1,000 words equivalent) their response to the play text being explored. This part of the portfolio will focus on the choice of (a) ‘explorative strategies’ and require students to explain how the use of these strategies enhanced their understanding and appreciation of the play text being explored.

How did the use of different drama techniques (explorative strategies) help you to:

understand the play;
understand the style of the play;
understand the characters;
understand the thoughts, feelings and motivations of the characters;
understand the situations that the characters are in, or any problems that they face;
understand the social, cultural or historical background to the play?

Some Explorative strategies

Still image (one person acts as a sculptor and creates images by positioning individuals in the group in relation to one another to create a still image)
Thought-tracking (stopping individuals during an in-role activity and asking them to reveal their inner thoughts at a particular moment)
Narrating (providing a spoken commentary that accompanies stage action, or a story being related by a character)
Hot-seating (a technique used to deepen an actor’s understanding of a role. The individual sits in the ‘hot seat’ and has questions fired at them that they have to answer from the point of view of the role they are enacting)
Role-play (an individual pretends to be someone else, by putting themselves in a similar position and imagining what that person might say, think and feel)
Cross-cutting (creating a scene or scenes and then reordering the action by ‘cutting’ forwards and backwards to different moments)
Forum-theatre (a scene is enacted and watched by the rest of the group. At any point in the drama, observers or actors can stop the action to ask for help or refocus the work. Observers can step in and add a role or take over an existing one)
Marking the moment (having created a piece of drama work, individuals identify a significant moment in the piece. This can be done in discussion, marked by freezing the action, using captions, inner thoughts spoken out loud, using lighting to spotlight the moment, etc. The moment will represent significance for the individual in terms of revealing an understanding, an insight or evoking a feeling about the issue or idea being explored).

TASK 2: The development phase (AO2)

Students should capture on a maximum of two sheets of A4 paper (ie four sides, 500 – 1,000 words equivalent) the ways in which a section of the play that has been explored using (b) The drama medium and (c) the elements of drama. This part of the portfolio requires students to demonstrate their understanding and interpretation of a scene or section of the play that has emerged during the workshop process.

The work for this assessment task can be presented as a series of sketches, drawings, textual annotations, written statements and/or diagrams that aptly summarise the student’s ideas for staging a scene or scenes from the play that have emerged during the workshop process.

Write about how you went about staging or performing parts of the play or parts of the story. You can also imagine how you might stage a part of the play. (Look back at the notes for task 2 in UNIT 1 to help you with this.)

TASK 3: The evaluative phase (AO4)

Based on a performance you have seen
Students should provide an evaluation of the work of others The evaluation should be captured on a maximum of two sheets of A4 paper (ie four sides, 500 – 1,000 words equivalent).
The evaluation will be a reflection on the effectiveness of the interpretation of a play seen under workshop or performance conditions. The work of others being evaluated can be of any play but the evaluation should reflect the students’ understanding and appreciation of how others are using the medium and elements of drama. In the evaluation, students should recognise the significance of the social, cultural and/or historical influences on the play and/or the performance and be able to make connections and comparisons between written and performed texts.

Write an evaluation of the performance of a live play that you have seen.

How well did the performance work? How did the performers bring the play to life and make it meaningful. (Look back at the notes for task 2 in UNIT 1 to help you with this.)

The drama medium

The use of costume, masks and/or makeup
The use of sound and/or music
The use of lighting
The use of space and/or levels
The use of set and/or props
The use of movement, mime and/or gesture
The use of voice
The use of spoken language.

The elements of drama

Action/Plot/Content (the story, the characters, and/or the theme(s) of the drama)
Forms (the way the story is told, the characters are portrayed and/or the themes are depicted)
Climax/Anti-climax (building and/or releasing tension in the drama and/or a sense of expectation)
Rhythm/Pace/Tempo (the rate at which the action moves along and the extent to which this changes)
Contrasts (for example, stillness vs. activity/silence vs. noise)
Characterisation (the means used to portray a role using vocal and physical skills)
Conventions (using techniques such as slow motion, freeze-frame, audience asides, soliloquy, establishing one part of the space as one location and a different part of the space as another location)
Symbols (the representational use of props, gestures, expressions, costume, lighting, and/or setting. For example, blue lighting to represent night-time, a white costume to represent the innocence of a character).

Below is the marking critera for a top grade student:

Practical

Show a clear and consistent understanding and appreciation of the ways in which others use the elements and medium of drama in realising a written text in performance, making critical judgements that are informed and well justified.
Evaluate the effectiveness of the drama constructively and objectively making informed judgements about the ways in which the social, cultural and/or historical influences are communicated.

Portfolio