Year 7 & 8 Drama
Unit 1: All The World's A Stage
This unit will embrace the style of realism. Students will perform a scripted drama. Through an Actor's Log Book, students will identify how role, character and tension are developed by the playwright through the script and analyse how specific moments within the drama emphasis (focus) this for the audience. They will evaluate how effectively they communicate these to the audience in their own performance. Students will devise a realism drama applying roles and characters, which draw on life like motivations, and focus on the application of voice and movement skills to communicate this purpose and attitude to a known audience.
Year 9 Drama
Unit 1: Make 'Em Laugh
In this unit, students will explore the development of different traditional and contemporary styles of comedy, with a specific focus on commedia dell'arte and clowning. Students will work in pairs to create an improvised drama in the style of commedia dell'arte, manipulating and sustaining the elements of their selected stock character in the given circumstances. Individually, students will create a Vlog response that analyses and evaluates the creation of meaning for the audience in the debase production of The Clown from Snowy River. Students will then work in small groups to use existing script excerpts and their own ideas to plan, produce, rehearse and refine a clowning performance that is suitable for an audience of Prep students to teach them the importance of working together as a team.
Year 10 Drama
Unit 1: A Mirror of Society
In this unit, students will explore how realistic performance styles manipulate the elements of drama to communicate meaning, with a focus on Australian drama (including Indigenous perspectives).
Students will work in groups to plan, produce, rehearse and refine an Australian Realism performance from a published scripted text with a focus on the link between the elements of role, character and relationships and the actor's use of voice and movement.
Individually, students will construct an analytical essay that analyses the elements of drama in performance and evaluates the meaning and aesthetic effect in performance.
Students will then devise and create individual scripts manipulating the elements of drama and conventions of Australian Realism.
Unit 2: …and a hammer with which to smash it.
In this unit, students will explore how non-realistic performance styles and dramatic forms manipulate the elements of drama to communicate meaning, with a focus on Documentary drama.
Individually, students will work on a project that analyses the use of an element of drama (tension, mood and atmosphere) in a performance. Students will then devise a performance concept that uses this element to communicate meaning for their audience and present this in a multimodal presentation.
Students will then work in small groups to plan, produce, rehearse and refine devised Documentary drama performance, utilising concepts from their project.