Preparation Process - Director's Notebook
Preparation process
In preparation for this task within the core syllabus students at SL and HL must have had experience of:
| THEATRE IN CONTEXT | THEATRE PROCESSES | PRESENTING THEATRE | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SL and HL | Working with play texts | Researching and examining the various contexts of at least one published play text and reflecting on live theatre moments they have experienced as spectators. | Taking part in the practical exploration of at least two contrasting published play texts and engaging with the process of transforming a play text into action. | Directing at least one scene or section from one published play text which is presented to others. |
Each student chooses a play text that they have not studied in class, and for which they can clearly identify the potential for success in transforming it from page to stage. Once selected, the chosen play text cannot be used by the student in any other assessment task for this course.
Assessing the task
Students then undertake the following process for assessment.
Theatre in context
- Each student carries out research into the cultural context from which the play originates and/or research into the play text’s theoretical context, focusing on its style, form, practice or genre.
- Each student identifies the key ideas presented by the playwright (such as intended meanings, motifs, themes or throughline). As the author(s) of the text, the playwright might be one person, more than one person or in some cases a theatre company.
- Each student documents this in their theatre journal.
Theatre processes
- Each student records their interpretation of the selected play text and their artistic responses to the entire play text as a director, making links to live theatre performances they have experienced as a spectator that have influence, inspired or informed them. The live theatre performances must not be productions of the same play text selected for study in this assessment task.
- Each student records their exploration of the selected play text and their own ideas regarding how this play may be staged for an audience.
- Each student documents this in their theatre journal.
Presenting theatre
- Each student explains their directorial intention(s) and their intended impact on audience and demonstrates how this would inform their staging of two particular moments of the play. These can be moments of atmosphere, emotion or tension or moments that communicate the meaning(s) of the play.
- Each student demonstrates an understanding, through the staging of these two moments, of how performance and production elements function together.
- Each student documents this in their theatre journal.
This task is concerned with the textual exploration a director might carry out before they go into the rehearsal room to work with actors, defining what they want to bring out of the text and how it might look when finally staged. The process of how this might be achieved through rehearsals is not the focus of this task.
It is unlikely that a director would be responsible for the full scenic or technical design of the final theatre production; however their vision for the staging of the play text would certainly involve a clear understanding of how individual production elements might be employed to fulfill their directorial intentions and how these would potentially impact on the audience.
