What will you do on this course?
The subject content is separated into three components:
- Drama and Theatre
- Creating original drama
- Making Theatre
This is taught across the two years through a mixture of exploration and analysis of the two set texts, watching and deconstruction of a range of live performance and a consistent practical exploration of various styles of theatre, manifesting in two practical performances across the two years, one scripted and the other a piece of original group Drama.
How will you be assessed?
Two coursework pieces make up 60% of the coursework marks. The first is the creation, performance and written progress report of a piece of original drama (30%). This is marked out of 60. 20 marks are achieved through the performance and 40 marks awarded to the working notebook, describing the process of devising. The second coursework element (also worth 30%) focuses on exploration of text. Students must learn how to contribute to text- based drama in a live theatre context for an audience. They explore practically three performance extracts and ultimately perform or create a realised design for one of these key extracts, then performed to an external examiner and worth 40 marks. They analyse and evaluate their interpretation of all three key extracts through a Reflective Report (worth 20 marks). Lastly, Drama and Theatre A Level students will sit a three-hour open book written exam worth 80 marks (40% of A Level) which questions their knowledge on two set texts and a live performance seen.
What could this course lead to?
Primarily, this course can lead to studying a wide spectrum of performance based disciplines. These courses would be directly industry focused for those who wish to pursue a career within Performing Arts. Secondly and equally importantly, the ‘soft skills’, polished through the practical and collaborative style the course is structured are specifically enriching for those wanting to embark on courses in Law, Media, Humanities and the Arts in general. Whatever the future holds, students of A Level Drama and Theatre emerge with a toolkit of transferable skills preparing them for their next steps.
What syllabus do you follow?
AQA 7262