🎭 Year 8 Drama

Shakespeare in Performance

Understanding Shakespeare's Language

• Shakespeare wrote in Early Modern English (c.1590–1613) — the language has shifted but is still English. Most apparent differences are in vocabulary and sentence structure.
• Blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter (10 syllables, alternating unstressed/stressed). The rhythm de-DUM de-DUM de-DUM de-DUM de-DUM. Used for elevated, formal speech — aristocrats, kings, in serious moments.
• Prose: ordinary writing without metre — used for comic scenes, lower-status characters, madness (Hamlet's "mad" scenes), or intimacy
• Rhyming couplets: often signal the end of a scene or a significant conclusion. e.g. "The play's the thing / Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King."
• Soliloquy: a character alone on stage speaking their inner thoughts directly to the audience. Creates intimacy and dramatic irony (the audience knows what other characters do not)
• Aside: a brief comment spoken directly to the audience, unheard by other characters on stage

The Actor's Approach to Shakespeare

• Find the operative word: the most important word in a line that carries the meaning. Stress it, explore it.
• Follow the punctuation: Shakespeare's punctuation is a breathing and acting guide. A comma is a brief pause; a full stop a longer one; a question mark or exclamation changes the pitch pattern.
• Speak the speech "trippingly on the tongue" (Hamlet's advice) — don't try to make it sound "Shakespearean" artificially; find the natural, conversational truth in the words
• Use the antitheses: Shakespeare frequently structures speeches around opposites. Find them: they are the emotional engine of the speech (e.g. "To be, or not to be"). Play the contrast actively.
• Paraphrase first: understand what you're saying before acting it. Then return to the original text with full comprehension.

Staging Shakespeare

• The Globe Theatre (original opened c.1599): open-air amphitheatre; up to 3,000 audience members; groundlings (standing in the yard around the stage for a penny); no artificial lighting — performances in daylight; minimal set; elaborate costumes
• The thrust stage: the audience surrounds the stage on three sides, creating intimacy and allowing soliloquies to feel personal and direct
• Modern Shakespeare productions often update setting and costumes to a different period while keeping Shakespeare's language: sets in 1930s fascist Europe, or modern dress. The key question is always: what does this choice tell us about the play's themes?
• Directorial concept: the director's overarching interpretation of the play — what is it really about? How does the concept influence casting, setting, costume, and staging decisions?

Physical Theatre

What Is Physical Theatre?

• Physical theatre prioritises the body as the primary expressive tool — movement, gesture, and physical image carry as much meaning as (or more than) the spoken word
• May blend dance, mime, acrobatics, visual imagery, and text in non-naturalistic ways
• Practitioners: Frantic Assembly (UK), DV8 Physical Theatre (Lloyd Newson), Complicité (Simon McBurney), Gecko

Frantic Assembly

• Founded 1994 by Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett. Known for integrating everyday movement (chair work, partner lifts, everyday gestures) into emotionally powerful theatre.
• Chair duets: Frantic Assembly's signature technique — two performers explore relationships, power dynamics, and emotion through choreographed movements with chairs, all driven by the dramatic need of the scene
• Hymn hands: a structured physical vocabulary exercise using simple hand-to-hand contact; develops trust, spatial awareness, and ensemble coordination
• Round/By/Through: an ensemble technique where performers travel around, past, and through each other in structured paths — creates complex ensemble pictures without collision
• Productions: Othello, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (National Theatre), Things I Know to Be True

DV8 Physical Theatre

• Founded 1986 by Lloyd Newson. Work is often explicitly political and challenging — explores themes of masculinity, identity, sexuality, violence, and injustice.
• Verbatim physical theatre: uses recorded interviews as the text; the physical vocabulary contradicts, amplifies, or ironically comments on the spoken word
• Key productions: Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men, Can We Talk About This? (about free speech and Islam), John

Physical Theatre in Practice

• Key principles: trust between performers, awareness of the ensemble, using the whole body expressively, making bold physical choices
• Contact work: using touch and physical support to create shared movement images
• Levels: performers work at low level (floor), mid level (standing), and high level (lifted) to create visual variety and express status/power relationships
• Slow motion: slows movement to reveal detail, create tension, or give epic weight to a moment. Hard to sustain — requires core strength and control.
• Repetition: repeating a gesture or action with variation can reveal new meaning, create rhythm, or suggest obsession/trauma

Devised Performance with Complex Stimuli

What Is Devised Theatre?

• Devised theatre is created by the company from scratch — no pre-written script. The piece emerges from a collaborative creative process.
• Starting from a stimulus (a provocative starting point) rather than an existing text gives total creative freedom but requires discipline and structure

Complex Stimuli for Year 8

• Abstract stimuli: a piece of music, an emotion, a concept (identity, borders, belonging), an abstract artwork. No obvious "story" to follow — requires interpretation and decision-making.
• Documentary/news stimulus: a real event or social issue. Verbatim techniques — using real people's words. Raises questions of responsibility and representation.
• Multi-text stimulus: two or more sources (a poem, a photograph, a sound clip) presented together. How do they relate? Where is the friction or resonance? The response explores the space between them.
• Found text: non-dramatic text (a newspaper article, a shopping list, a legal document) performed as if it were dramatic text — creating ironic or illuminating effects

The Devising Process

• Explore the stimulus: respond physically, verbally, and visually without judgement. What does it make you feel? What images, stories, or questions does it raise?
• Generate material: improvise, write, move. Create more material than you need.
• Select and shape: edit ruthlessly. What serves the central idea? What is excess?
• Develop and structure: arrange material into a coherent (or deliberately fragmented) dramatic structure. Apply theatrical form.
• Rehearse and refine: fix what works, develop what doesn't, polish performance quality
• Document your process: the working notebook (sketches, notes, reflections) is as important as the final piece in examined drama

Script Interpretation

Reading a Script Actively

• A script is not the play — it is a blueprint. The actor and director complete the work by making choices about what is not written.
• What does the stage direction tell me? (Or, if it's Shakespeare or early drama, there are almost none — the clues are in the text)
• What does my character want (objective/intention) in this scene? What is the super-objective (overarching goal for the whole play)?
• What is the obstacle? Drama requires conflict — what stands between the character and their goal?
• What are the subtext and subtextual layers? — what is the character thinking but not saying?

Status and Power in Scripts

• Status: the relative power or dominance of characters in a scene. Status can be high (dominant) or low (submissive) — and it can shift.
• Status is shown through: body language, use of space (taking up more/less space, moving towards or away), eye contact, vocal confidence, who speaks first, interruptions
• Playing status shifts is often where the dramatic interest lies — moments when a low-status character temporarily (or permanently) gains the upper hand

Making Directorial Choices

• As director/actor: choose how to stage a scene. Where are the actors? How do they move? What do they do during another character's lines?
• Motivated movement: all movement on stage must be motivated by the character's inner state or objective, not by "it would look good"
• Blocking: the planned positions and movements of actors on stage. Good blocking should serve the story and reveal character relationships — not obstruct sightlines or feel arbitrary.
• Contrast: a good scene has contrast of pace, volume, energy, and movement. Monotony of any one element loses the audience.

Evaluation & Critical Response

Watching Theatre Critically

• Performance, design, and directorial choices are all equally valid subjects for analysis
• When watching a production, consider: acting (vocal and physical skills), direction (use of space, pace, structure), design (set, costume, lighting, sound)
• Ask: what is this production trying to communicate? How effectively do the choices serve that intention?

Writing a Critical Evaluation

• PEE or PEEL structure: Point (make a specific claim), Evidence (the specific moment from the performance), Explanation (how the evidence supports your point), Link (connect back to the overall impact or intention)
• Use precise theatrical vocabulary: proxemics, upstage/downstage, blocking, mime, status, Brechtian, Stanislavskian, choral movement, abstraction, semiotics (the study of signs in theatre)
• Evaluate as well as describe: "The performer moved slowly across the stage" is description. "The performer's slow, deliberate movement across the stage created a sense of dread that built unbearable tension before the climactic confrontation" is evaluation.
• Make a judgement: did it work? Was it effective? Consider the intended audience and context.

Evaluating Your Own Work

• Identify what you set out to achieve (intention/aim) and evaluate how close you came to achieving it
• Be specific about what worked well, what didn't, and — crucially — WHY, and what you would do differently
• Self-evaluation is not self-criticism: honest, analytical reflection on your own work is the sign of a developing practitioner
• Use the language of the subject: "I used proxemics to suggest the tension between the two characters — as the argument escalated, I deliberately closed the distance to create physical threat"