Inquiry questions
• How can drama be used to reframe purpose, context and meaning through contemporising texts?
• How can you manipulate and shape dramatic languages to communicate to 21st century audiences?
• How can drama reshape and transform meaning of inherited texts through skills of drama, including devising, directing and acting?
Subject matter
In this area of study, students will:
• discuss and reflect on the relationship between text, meaning, context and audience, focusing on
dramatic meaning inherited from the playwright in the text and its relationship to context and audience both past and present
contemporary understandings of the multiplicity of meaning
contemporary understandings that audience are co-creators of meaning
• discuss and reflect on the historical, sociological and political context of a selection of inherited dramatic traditions (such as Greek, Elizabethan or Neoclassical theatre) through techniques such as research, discussion, workshopping and viewing text, and process drama
• discuss and reflect on the evolution of dramatic practice in diverse cultural contexts, including Aboriginal cultures, Torres Strait Islander cultures and/or Asia–Pacific cultures
• demonstrate and apply acting skills, encompassing stagecraft, including a knowledge of stage areas, awareness of stage direction, sightlines, responding to cues and strategies to document blocking (such as script annotation) through text- and non-text-based learning experiences
• demonstrate and apply safe and effective vocal practices, including warm-up techniques and effective application of pitch, pace, pause, intonation, inflection and projection through text- and non-text-based learning experiences
• demonstrate and apply safe and effective movement skills, including use of energy and control through text- and non-text-based learning experiences
• demonstrate and apply individual performance skills in an ensemble (turn-taking, listening, group awareness, energy levels) to present dramatic action through text- and non-text-based making activities
• use a scaffolded play-building and rehearsal process to progress from a vision to a polished performance
• interpret and analyse, using a reverse chronology approach, scripted drama, and professional live or recorded theatre, from contemporary practices to inherited traditions, to
identify and evaluate meaning and relevance to a 21st century audience, by applying their knowledge and understanding of the dramatic languages of selected styles, considering
elements of drama (such as character, contrast, dramatic focus, language, mood, movement, place, relationship, role, situation, space, symbol, tension, time)
conventions of selected styles:
o Greek theatre (such as chorus, heightened emotion and action, mask, presentational acting); or o Elizabethan theatre (such as heightened emotion and action, iambic pentameter, soliloquy, direct
address, aside, poetic image, presentational acting); or
o Neoclassicism (such as heightened emotion and action; language as lyrical, formal, rhythmic and rich with imagery; elevated movement, drawing on presentational use of gesture, including techniques of commedia dellar te)
conventions of Contemporary performance (such as fragmentation, hybridity and openness of form, intertextuality, hypertextuality, appropriation, site-specific performance and mediatised
performance, incorporating the use of performance technologies)
• apply conventions that privilege image over spoken text, such as
Subject matter
conventions of physical theatre (viewpoints, movement sequence, motif, poetic image, transformation of word into image, freeze-frame, ritualised movement)
conventions of visual theatre (inclusion of media, object theatre, symbolic image)
conventions of non-linear form (flashback, flashforward, parallel action, cyclic structure, episodic structure)
• apply the skill of directing in articulating a vision to transform an inherited published text
• apply literacy knowledge and skills, through written, kinaesthetic and oral communication, to
understand purpose, forms and structure of a multimodal directorial pitch, using a digital visual presentation and an extended analytical essay
use drama terminology
use language conventions to construct responses
use critical literacies to assist learning when analysing, evaluating and making dramatic works
• justify directorial choices in structuring and shaping dramatic action in relation to chosen purposes, contexts and dramatic meaning
• apply critiquing skills by
analysing and evaluating the relationship between text, purpose, context and dramatic meaning in their own and others’ work, through written, kinaesthetic and oral communication
analysing and evaluating how dramatic conventions of Contemporary performance in professional live or recorded live theatre are manipulated to address the needs of a 21st century audience
• synthesise analysis and evaluation to argue a position in response to known and unfamiliar excerpts of recorded live theatre
• devise and present dramatic action
by manipulating the elements of drama
by manipulating and structuring a range of dramatic forms and conventions of selected styles
through improvisation, process drama and play-building
for selected purposes and contexts
• create and present new interpretations of inherited dramatic texts through manipulating the elements of drama (including character, language, movement, time, place, space, tension, symbol) and conventions of Contemporary performance in relation to structure, purpose, context and dramatic meaning to
reframe meaning
hybridise and fracture dramatic action and form
transform context and purpose.
Suggested texts
Note: The following are examples only and are not mandatory.
Contemporary:
• Brendan Kennelly: The Trojan Women
• Wesley Enoch: Black Medea
• Daniel Keene: Cho Cho San
• Robert Wilson: Einstein on the Beach
• Robert Lepage: Far Side of the Moon
• Ariane Mnouchkine: Le Dérnier Caravansérail
• Zen Zen Zo: The Tempest
• Richard Allen and Karen Pearlman: Performing the Unnameable — An anthology of Australian performance texts
Greek:
• Sophocles: Antigone; Electra; Oedipus; Philoctetes
• Euripides: Bacchae; Medea; The Phoenician Women; Hecabe; Trojan Women
• Aristophanes: Clouds; Birds; Lysistrata; Frogs Elizabethan:
• William Shakespeare’s complete works
• Christopher Marlowe: Dr Faustus
Subject matter
• Ben Jonson: Volpone; The Alchemist Neoclassicism:
• Moliere: Tartuffe; The Doctor in Spite of Himself; The Imaginary Invalid; The Misanthrope
• Carl Goldoni: The Venetian Twins; The Servant of Two Masters
• Jean Racine: Phaedra