Drama

Scope
VCE Drama focuses on the creation and performance of characters and stories that communicate ideas, meaning and messages using contemporary drama-making practices. Students engage with creative processes, explore and respond to stimulus material, and apply play-making techniques to develop and present devised work. Students learn about, and draw on, a range of performance styles and conventions through the investigation of work by a diverse range of drama practices and practitioners, including Australian drama practitioners. Students explore characteristics of selected performance styles and apply and manipulate conventions, dramatic elements, and production areas, including sustainable ways to source and apply production areas. They use performance skills and expressive skills to explore and develop character(s). Within the scope of this study, students will create performances that include transformation of character, time and place, and application of symbol. 

Rationale
In VCE Drama, students tell stories, explore ideas, make sense of their worlds and communicate meaning through the practice of performance-making. The study of drama enables students’ individual and collective identities to be explored, expressed and validated. Students develop an ability to empathise through understanding and accepting diversity. Students draw from, and respond to, contexts and stories that reflect different cultures, genders, sexualities and abilities. VCE Drama equips students with knowledge, skills and confidence to communicate individually and collaboratively in a broad range of social, cultural and work-related contexts. The study of drama may provide pathways to training and tertiary study in acting, dramaturgy, directing, theatre production, theatre-making, scriptwriting, marketing, communication and drama criticism.