Drama

Welcome to the Drama Department
In Year 7 students are introduced to Drama through role play and games. They explore a character’s physicality and learn to respond to external stimulus. They extend their experience of using drama techniques by exploring still image, thought tracking, narration, role play and rehearsal techniques. They look at responding, exploring and developing different stimuli as starting points for drama learning to use scripts, improvisation, devising and performance. In Year 8 students have the opportunity to use a wide range of drama techniques including still image, thought tracking, role play, mime, choral speech & movement, and hot seating. Students learn how to use movement and voice to create characters, and to use drama as a way of exploring their feelings about themes, topics and issues in the world. In Year 9 pupils prepare and develop skills needed for GCSE Drama. This work consists of learning lines, exploring plays, devising extended pieces of drama and the study of different theatre styles. All students across all year groups have the opportunity to take part in the annual school production.

Meet the Drama Department
The department team consists of two members of staff. These are:

Drama Overview
COURSE STRUCTURE:

EDEXCEL GCSE Drama is now split into 3 components, allowing students to access a wide variety of different dramatic forms and to develop a broad range of skills.

COMPONENT 1: Devising (worth 40% of qualification)
Devising is an exciting and challenging opportunity for students to work collaboratively with others to explore a range of stimuli in order to create an original performance piece. Students will be required to:

• Create a devised performance from a variety of stimulus which is marked by their teacher.
• Complete a portfolio covering the creating and developing process and analysis and evaluation of this process.

COMPONENT 2: Performance from Text (worth 20% of the qualification)
This component deals with developing knowledge, understanding and skills in exploring and performing from a performance text. Students will be required to:

• Students will interpret this text and rehearse and refine two key extracts, resulting in a final performance. These performances will be marked by an external examiner.

COMPONENT 3: Theatre Makers in Practice (worth 40% of the qualification)
In this component, students will study the work of playwrights and will look and the theatrical choices that are made for a live performance in order to communicate ideas to an audience. This component comprises of two sections of a written exam.

• Section A: This section consists of one question broken into five parts (short and extended responses) based on an unseen extract from the chosen performance text that will have been studied in lesson.
• Section B: This section consists of two questions requiring students to analyse and evaluate a live theatre performance they have seen.

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