I'm a year 12 student at a (dreadfulll) country high school, and my class (and myself) still don't know how to write a drama essay properly!!
What we write for drama would be excellent A range english essays (but including include exporential learning ect etc - we put in what we're told to) - and receive a B at the highest! which is terrible as I want a minimum of a band 5 in drama, and an overall high atar.
The teacher seems to mark by his own mysterious, objective methods, and none of us can figure out how to please him with our essay work
Are we supposed to write in first person for the exporential?
What are some of the must-do points for a drama essay?
Some advice, in any way, shape or form would be excellent. Thanks.
Have you had any help yet?
Pretty much, for Removalists and Norm and Ahmed, you want to write about what each play's themes are:
E.G. for The Removalists=
- Gender – the ongoing struggle for equality in the relationships between sexes
• Masculine visions of women – what’s controversial/making news today? ie. Attitudes of footballers and sportspeople / derogatory comments from judges / objectification of women’s sexuality in magazines and television and music clips
• Male aggression/territorialism/insecurity – violence and aggression as prevalent as ever
• Huge recent police crackdowns on drinking and pub violence
• Generational envy/tension – the struggle of the older generations to let go
of their hard won past for their younger successors’ future
• Police brutality – the use of force and a variety of new weapons in the discharging of police duties, and how these are shown through staging, direction.
NORM AND AHMED:
- Racism and xenophobia
• Alienation and the fear of difference “never underestimate the power of difference” Buzo
• The insecurity behind male aggression
• Generational envy & the Australian Dream
• Class and education
There are similar themes in both of these plays by Williamson and Buzo, and you must also consider their relevance in todays society:
modern actors / directors have the freedom of interpretation – we can perform in ‘period detail’ or
theatrical ‘timelessness’, it is how we choose the represent the world and space on the play on the stage that counts.
In terms of Laramie and Parramatta Girls, you speak about how the differences between them, show the line that Verbatim playwrights all come across:
Can I make the stories of these people engaging, whilst still keeping the truth intact?
E.G. Parramatta Girls is a lot more theatrical than Laramie. There is much more complex characterisation, and much more complex sets and it's tense is in the remembered past, and flashes between the present and past. Whereas Laramie is more..chronological, and the actors play over 60 different characters between them.
In terms of the experiential contact, you may be able to research some past performances of all these plays, and read some reviews. Reviewers are trying to get people to go see the plays (or bag them out) and they should often speak of what the experience of watching the plays was like and what the audience was made to feel - which is pretty much exactly what you're supposed to write about! And then apply what you read to certain parts found in the plays and maybe add in a quote/stage direction found in the script that illustrates what you're trying to say and BINGO! You can also make up something, for Verbatim for example, make up a fake in-class workshop you did. A good one would be: You and your classmates got into 2 groups. 1 Group acted out Laramie in the way that Parramatta Girls is (very dramatic and theatrical), and the other acted out Parramatta Girls the way Laramie is, and you analysed both representations, and how the impact of the plays changed. - just an example
But most important of all - answer the question, and try not to retell too much, speak more about the context in Aust. Theatre, and the Theatricality in Verbatim.
