🎭 Year 7 Drama

Voice & Vocal Skills

Your voice is your most powerful performance tool. Developing vocal skills allows you to communicate character, emotion, and meaning clearly and compellingly.

Key Vocal Skills

• Volume: how loud or quiet you are. Vary volume for effect — whispering creates intimacy or tension; shouting conveys anger or urgency.
• Pace: how fast or slow you speak. Speaking quickly can convey excitement or panic; slowly can convey sadness or authority.
• Pitch: how high or low your voice is. A high pitch can suggest fear or excitement; a low pitch can convey authority or menace.
• Tone: the quality and emotion in your voice (warm, cold, sarcastic, gentle, aggressive).
• Intonation: the rise and fall of your voice within a sentence. A falling intonation signals a statement; rising signals a question.
• Emphasis/stress: placing stress on particular words changes meaning. "I didn't say he stole it" has very different meanings depending on which word you stress.
• Pause: deliberate silence for effect. Creates tension, gives the audience time to absorb information, or signals a change of thought.
• Articulation: speaking clearly, pronouncing words correctly. Essential for being understood by an audience.
• Accent/dialect: the way words are pronounced in a particular region or by a particular character.

Projection

• Projection = making your voice fill the performance space without shouting
• Comes from breath control and resonance, not throat tension
• Always breathe from the diaphragm (belly, not chest); support your voice with breath

Physical Skills

Key Physical Skills

• Gesture: deliberate movement of the hands, arms, or head to communicate meaning. Gestures can replace words or reinforce them. e.g. pointing, shrugging, waving
• Facial expression: using the face to show emotion — arguably the most powerful visual communication tool. Must be visible to the whole audience.
• Eye contact: looking directly at another actor (or breaking contact for effect); looking at the audience directly (direct address)
• Posture: the way you hold your body. Upright posture = confidence, authority; hunched = sadness, submission; rigid = tension or fear
• Movement: how and where you move on stage. Smooth vs jerky movement, fast vs slow, light vs heavy
• Stillness: not moving can be just as powerful as moving. A completely still character attracts attention and creates tension
• Spatial awareness: awareness of where you and other performers are in relation to each other and the audience
• Proxemics: the use of physical distance between performers to show relationships. Being close suggests intimacy or conflict; far apart suggests distance or isolation

Stage Areas

• Stage directions are from the actor's perspective facing the audience:
• Downstage = towards the audience | Upstage = away from the audience
• Stage right = the actor's right | Stage left = the actor's left
• Centre stage = the middle of the performing area
• Upstaging: standing behind another actor so the audience focuses on you (generally to be avoided, unless intentional)

Drama Techniques

These are specific methods and conventions used to create drama, explore themes, and communicate with an audience.

• Still image / freeze frame / tableau: performers freeze in position to capture a moment, like a photograph. Useful for showing key moments, relationships, or themes.
• Hot seating: a character (played by a student) is questioned by others as if in an interview. Develops character understanding and improvisation skills.
• Role play: taking on a character in an improvised or scripted scenario
• Thought tracking: a performer freezes and speaks their character's inner thoughts aloud, revealing what the character is thinking beneath the surface
• Conscience alley / thought tunnel: two lines of performers face each other; a character walks between them while each person voices a thought or argument (used to show a character's internal dilemma)
• Forum theatre: a scene is performed; audience members can stop the action and swap with an actor to try a different approach (originated by Augusto Boal)
• Narration: a storyteller outside the action who describes events, context, or characters' thoughts
• Split scene: two scenes performed simultaneously in different parts of the performance space
• Cross-cutting: cutting between two scenes happening at the same time (like editing between two simultaneous moments in film)
• Slow motion: exaggerating and slowing down movement for dramatic effect; often used for violence, dreams, or powerful moments
• Mime: acting without words, using only physical expression. Requires clarity of action and expression

Devising Drama

Devising means creating original drama — as a group, you develop characters, plot, themes, and structure from scratch.

Starting Points for Devising

• A stimulus: an image, a piece of music, a news headline, a poem, an object, a theme
• Questions to ask: What story do we want to tell? Who are the characters? What is the conflict or tension? What is the message?
• Exploration through improvisation: try things out quickly; don't be precious about ideas; build on each other's suggestions

The Devising Process

• Exploration: experiment with the stimulus through improvisation and drama techniques
• Development: select the most effective ideas; refine them through rehearsal
• Structure: decide on the form and structure. Linear (chronological)? Non-linear (flashbacks)? Episodic?
• Rehearsal: refine timing, blocking (where people move), vocal performance
• Performance and evaluation: perform for an audience; reflect on what worked and what could improve

Collaborative Skills

• Listen actively to other group members' ideas
• Build on ideas ("Yes, and…") rather than shutting them down
• Give constructive feedback: specific, kind, and helpful
• Share responsibility for the final product
• Resolve disagreements through discussion and compromise

Types of Theatre & Stage

Stage Configurations

• Proscenium arch: traditional stage with a picture-frame arch; audience on one side; clear separation between stage and audience. e.g. West End theatres
• Thrust stage: extends into the audience, with the audience on three sides. Closer relationship between performers and audience.
• In-the-round / arena: audience surrounds the performance area on all sides. Very intimate; no hiding place for performers
• Traverse / catwalk: a long narrow performance space with audiences on both sides
• Promenade: the audience moves through different spaces following the performers
• Site-specific: a real-world location chosen for its meaning and connection to the performance (e.g. performing in a factory, a forest, a hospital)
• Black box: a flexible, rectangular room that can be rearranged into different configurations

Theatre Vocabulary

• Wings: areas off-stage at the sides | Flies: space above the stage for scenery
• Prompt: a reminder of forgotten lines; the person who does this is the prompter
• Blocking: the planned movement of actors on stage
• Fourth wall: the imaginary wall between performers and audience; "breaking the fourth wall" = addressing the audience directly
• Dress rehearsal: the final rehearsal, in full costume and with all technical elements
• Technical rehearsal (tech run): a rehearsal focused on lighting, sound, and set changes

Drama Practitioners

Practitioners are theatre-makers whose theories and methods have shaped the way drama is created and performed.

Konstantin Stanislavski (1863–1938)

• Russian director and actor; creator of the most influential acting system in the world
• Key ideas: acting should feel "real" and truthful; actors should experience the emotions of their characters internally
• "Magic if": how would you feel and behave IF you were this character in this situation?
• Emotional memory: draw on your own past emotional experiences to fuel authentic performance
• Given circumstances: understand everything about your character's situation (background, relationships, wants, fears)
• Objective / intention: what does your character WANT in each scene? Pursue it actively
• Influenced the "Method Acting" tradition (Marlon Brando, Dustin Hoffman)

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)

• German playwright and director; created Epic Theatre
• Key idea: theatre should make audiences THINK critically, not just feel emotionally swept along
• Verfremdungseffekt ("alienation effect" / V-effect): deliberately reminding the audience they are watching a play — breaking the illusion of reality
• Techniques: actors speak directly to the audience, display signs with captions, step outside their roles to comment on the action
• His plays often address political and social issues: inequality, power, injustice
• Key works: Mother Courage and Her Children, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Life of Galileo

Augusto Boal (1931–2009)

• Brazilian theatre-maker; creator of Theatre of the Oppressed
• Key idea: theatre should empower ordinary people to challenge oppression and injustice
• Forum Theatre: audiences interrupt scenes of oppression and suggest or demonstrate alternatives
• Invisible Theatre: performances in everyday public spaces; audiences do not know they are watching a performance