OCR GCSE Drama

How to read a play For GCSE Drama, you are not reading your performance text simply as a piece of literature. Instead, you should think of it as a blueprint for a production. You must engage creatively with the text, imagining and practically exploring different choices that an actor, designer or director could make when staging a production of the play. These choices will have an impact on how the audience understands and is affected by the play. The introductory pages here offer guidance and exercises to help you to discuss and write about any of the plays with confidence, while the following chapter provides specific study guides for each set text. Characteristics of drama A play consists of dialogue and stage directions. The dialogue is spoken by the play’s characters. Through dialogue and physical actions, the characters reveal their thoughts, feelings and motivations. Stage directions can help the reader, and ultimately the audience, to understand the world of the play, such as its period and location, as well as specifying any physical objects needed, such as furniture or props. Stage directions might indicate actors’ tones of voice, use of props and movements, such as entrances, exits, fights, gestures and other actions necessary for the play. They could also indicate sound effects, lighting changes, costumes or music that could be used in the play. What the playwright and director are trying to achieve might, in part, be determined by the genre of the play. There are many different genres represented by the set texts you might study: Blood Brothers – musical theatre Death of a Salesman – modern tragedy Find Me – social drama Gizmo – children’s and young people’s theatre Kindertransport – historical drama Missing Dan Nolan – verbatim theatre Misterman – social drama/monologue. OCR GCSE Drama SECTION A Component 4 is your written examination. It is worth 80 marks and 40 per cent of your final GCSE. Fifty of the marks are assessed in Section A, which consists of a series of questions testing your understanding of your chosen set text and how its meaning could be realised in a performance. For this, you need to demonstrate your insight into acting, design and directing choices, as well as the historical and/or social context of your chosen text. No matter which set text you study, you will be expected to display certain skills and knowledge, such as how the stage space could be used effectively, how a character might be costumed or how the play (or a section of it) could be performed to achieve a particular effect. In your writing, you should use correct theatre terminology. HOW YOU WILL bE ASSESSED SET TEXTS COMPONENT 4: Drama: Performance and Response 16 Learners will explore practically a performance text to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of drama. Through their practical study, learners need to know how characters and performances communicate ideas and meaning to an audience. Learners are expected to: • (AO3) Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of how drama and theatre is developed and performed. WHAT THE SPECIFICATION SAYS… Genre: A category or type of drama, such as comedy, tragedy or musical theatre, usually with its own conventions. KEY TERm: 2