Drama
Unit 1 & 2
Course Description
VCE Drama focuses on the creation and performance of characters and stories that communicate ideas, meaning and messages. Students use creative processes, a range of stimulus material and play-making techniques to develop and present devised work. 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 learn about and draw on a range of performance styles relevant to practices of ritual and story-telling, contemporary drama practice and the work of significant drama practitioners. Students explore characteristics of selected performance and apply and manipulate conventions, dramatic elements and production areas. Students also analyse the development of their own work and performances by other drama practitioners.
Unit 1: Introducing Performance Styles
In this unit students study three or more performance styles from a range of social, historical and cultural contexts. They examine drama traditions of ritual and storytelling to devise performances that go beyond re-creation and/or representation of real life as it is lived.
This unit focuses on creating, presenting and analysing a devised ensemble performance that includes real or imagined characters and is based on stimulus material that reflects personal, cultural and/or community experiences and stories. This unit also involves analysis of a student’s own performance work and a work by professional drama performers.
Outcomes - On completion of this unit students will be able to:
Devise and document an ensemble drama performance based on experiences and/or stories.
Perform a devised drama performance to an audience.
Analyse the development, and the performance to an audience, of their own devised performance.
Analyse the presentation of ideas, stories and characters in a professional drama performance.
Unit 2: Australian Identity
In this unit students study aspects of Australian identity evident in contemporary drama practice. Students create, present and analyse a performance based on a person, an event, an issue, a place, an artwork, a text and/or an icon from a contemporary or historical Australian context.
In creating the performance, students use stimulus material that allows them to explore an aspect or aspects of Australian identity. They examine selected performance styles and explore the associated conventions. Students further develop their knowledge of the conventions of transformation of character, time and place, the application of symbol, and how these conventions may be manipulated to create meaning in performance and the use of dramatic elements and production areas.
Outcomes - On completion of this unit students will be able to:
Devise and document the processes used to create a solo performance that reflects an aspect or aspects of Australian identity and contemporary drama practice.
Present a devised performance that reflects aspects of Australian identity and contemporary drama practice.
Analyse the development, and performance to an audience, of their devised work.
Analyse and evaluate a performance of a drama work by professional Australian drama practitioners.
Resources/Requirements:
School laptop
A3 Visual Art Diary
Textas/pens/pencils etc.