GCSE DRAMA
Rehearsal Strategies
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GCSE DRAMA
REHEARSAL
STRATEGIES
Introduction
Role-play
Cross-Cutting
Soundscaping
Flashback
Split-screen
Forum Theatre
Still Image
Hot-Seating
Tableau
Marking The Moment
ThoughtTracking
Conclusion
Narrating
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GCSE
DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
During your GCSE Drama
course you will use a number
of techniques to explore
issues and characters in
drama.
You will learn to create
characters of your own too.
By using different rehearsal
strategies and techniques, you
will follow in the steps of
professional actors and
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GCSE
DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
When you consider exploring techniques for devising and
rehearsing plays, you will find many strategies that will assist
you in your rehearsals.
Different techniques will be used during the course and we
are going to consider some that you may come across whilst
working with your drama teacher.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
You will need to consider
many aspects of drama;
Space
Roles
Technology
Your audience
are just the initial items that
will need to be on your list
when you begin to plan a
production.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
The important thing to
remember during your
GCSE drama course
is that you will adopt a
variety of strategies in
order to arrive at the
end product of a
production.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
You will also spend time discussing:
Vocal effects
Breathing
Movement
Understanding a character
Exploring the meaning of the drama in groups
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
Of paramount importance is using explorative strategies to
create drama.
Drama does not just happen. Remember, months of hard
work goes into professional productions.
A great deal of thought and discussion goes into a final
production.
One person is not responsible for the production.
It really is a team effort.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
Working with other people in a co-operative manner is all
part of a GCSE Drama course.
You will have many ideas that you will want to share with
others; they too will have ideas that they want to share with
you.
Engaging in many of the rehearsal strategies that we shall
be discussing will enable you to explore situations and to
decide on the best techniques for presentation.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
Professional actors and directors adopt many of these
strategies when first working together on a production.
When you write about your work, you will be expected to
include these strategies in your explanations to show how you
explored a character or scene and how the production was
devised through these strategies.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
By using these techniques, you should be able to explain how
your understanding was enhanced of a character, situation or
a performance skill.
You need to remember though that the technique you use
must be there for specific reasons.
You will not be able to use them all at once!
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
Cross-cutting allows you to look at a scene from different
perspectives.
In other words, you can take a scene or a number of scenes
and re-order them so that they take place in a different order
to the one that the playwright had anticipated.
You can ‘cut’ backwards and forwards to different moments
of the drama.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
By using cross-cutting you can
explain to the audience why things
happened and what the reasons were
for characters to act in a particular
way.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
By moving backwards and forwards through time, you can
make the action more poignant for the audience.
A funeral scene, for example, can take place before a scene
where the deceased person is still alive, making plans for the
future and enjoying himself.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
Many drama productions take place in a linear timeline. In
other words, time on the stage is like everyday time. It is
sequential.
However, this can make drama predictable.
By changing the timeline and taking scenes out of order, the
action can be broken up.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
In this way, the audience may be aware of the significance of
what a character says or does, whereas the character may
seem oblivious to it.
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Rehearsal strategies
By using flashback, you present a scene to your audience
that is out of sync with time.
You literally ‘flash’ back to the past.
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Rehearsal strategies
By using flashback, you can communicate a story or
information about a character to your audience in order to
clarify the plot or the character’s actions for them.
Flashback helps the audience to understand the present.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
Just as you can use flashback to take the action backwards,
you can also use flashforward in the same way to take the
action forward in time to enhance tension.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
Forum theatre is a rehearsal technique that can be used as
you are rehearsing a scene.
The actors act out the scene, watched by a group of
observers.
At any time during the rehearsal, the actors who are
participating or the observers who are watching the scene can
stop the action and interrupt.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
Actors or observers can make suggestions about how things
could be tackled differently.
Someone else might even take over a role and suggest other
possibilities of how to present that role.
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Rehearsal strategies
The whole idea of forum theatre is to share ideas for the
common good of the production.
By using other people to shift the focus of the scene or to
suggest alternative actions, the scene may be considerably
improved.
If the person who makes the suggestion takes on the role too
to show exactly what they mean, this can be helpful.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
When undertaking forum theatre, you need to accept that
others may have very good ideas.
Just because they interrupt you, does not mean that full
scale arguments should break out!
You have to accept that this is a strategy to improve the
overall production not to have a dig at you personally.
This is not the moment for sulky temper tantrums.
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Rehearsal strategies
Hot-seating is a technique to deepen
the actor’s understanding of a
character and the role of that
character.
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Rehearsal strategies
This is a group technique where the
actor playing a role sits in the ‘hot seat’
and is questioned by other members of
the group.
That actor has to answer the
questions in the spirit of the character
that he/she is playing.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
By using this technique, the actor
can begin to deepen his/her
understanding of the character.
The character becomes more
believable to the actor as he/she
discusses issues in the role of the
character.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
When you have created a piece
of drama, you, your fellow actors
and the director may decide that
there is a moment in the action
that is of particular significance.
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Rehearsal strategies
It may be that the moment represents a particular significance
for that character.
It could also be that that moment sheds light on much of the
action that has taken place up until that moment.
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Rehearsal strategies
Or that moment may evoke certain strong feelings in a
character.
To ‘mark that moment’ as a special moment in the play, a
particular technique may be used.
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Rehearsal strategies
The action might be ‘frozen’
at that moment so every one
stands completely still on the
stage.
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Rehearsal strategies
A spotlight might be used
on one character to highlight
them.
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Rehearsal strategies
By marking this
moment, the actors
send a clear
message to the
audience that this is
a particularly
important moment.
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Rehearsal strategies
Inner thoughts might be spoken out loud.
This is known as self-narrating.
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Rehearsal strategies
Narrating is a spoken commentary that accompanies
the action that is taking place on the stage.
It can be spoken by a character or even a number of
characters.
It can also be spoken by a ‘narrator’ who is standing on
the sidelines and is not part of the action.
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Rehearsal strategies
Narrating is useful for informing the audience about the
action in a more neutral way than if the character narrated the
story personally.
It reveals part of the plot to the audience in a way that the
character cannot do.
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Rehearsal strategies
A letter or a diary could be read, for example, so that the
audience has more information on the action.
Narrating can take place during a scene or between scenes.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
Narrating can provide background information that it would
be difficult to act out or to bring into the plot in any other
way.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
Be wary though of too much narration.
Audiences will not want to sit listening to large chunks of
narration – they prefer to see action and interaction between
characters.
The narrator has to be interesting for the audience and has
to have something really worthwhile to say.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
Role-play is another strategy which allows an actor to deepen
his/her understanding of the character.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
The actor pretends to be someone else and takes on their
role completely.
By putting themselves in the role of a character, the actor
imagines exactly what that character thinks, feels, believes,
and how they would act in a certain situation.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
Role-play is important if you are going to make your audience
believe completely that you are the character.
By using your imagination as to what it is like to be that
character, you will persuade your audience that you are that
character.
Every production you will take part in will involve some sort of
role-play.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
Soundscaping is used to create the sounds and atmosphere
of a particular moment.
The actor will use his/her voice and body to capture the
sounds associated with the atmosphere of a situation or
place.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
Split-screen is just that.
You divide the stage into two and one part of the stage
shows one scene; the other part shows a different scene.
In this way, the audience gains two different perspectives on a
situation.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
So, for example, the parents of a teenager could be on one
side of the stage explaining a situation from their point of
view.
Their daughter could be on the other side of the stage
explaining what should be the same situation to her friends.
The content of the speeches and the understanding of the
different characters may, however, be totally different.
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Split-screen is effective
when one scene freezes
Rehearsal strategies
and the action moves
back to the other scene.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
A still image can be thought of just like a
photograph.
One person in the group takes
responsibility for positioning individuals
in the group into a tableau so they are
standing as a group in complete stillness.
That one person is acting like a sculptor
in forming the image of the scene.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
The group as a unit make up an
image – so, for example, there may
be six people on stage and by
stopping the action for a moment,
the audience can be allowed to look
at the actors’ facial expressions and
body language in more detail than
usual.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
In a panic situation or a situation of high
tension, the audience would be able to
see the fear or horror on the faces of the
actors.
They could also examine the gestures
that the actors are in the middle of
making.
The image is a group situation but the
audience can examine the whole
situation in minute detail.
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Rehearsal strategies
Tableau is another word for freeze-frame or still
image.
Tableau is the word for ‘painting’ in French and
that is exactly what it is on the stage.
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Rehearsal strategies
The actors adopt a pose and freeze, just as if
they were in a painting or a photograph.
Tableaux (the plural is tableaux) can be linked
to the next strategy that we are about to
consider, ‘thought-tracking’.
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DRAMA
Rehearsal strategies
Thought-tracking is the process
whereby a character is stopped
during a role and is asked to reveal
their thoughts at that moment.
The character then speaks out loud
his/her thoughts.
Other characters do not hear this.
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Rehearsal strategies
This technique allows the
audience to understand the
character in more depth.
Knowing someone’s thoughts
reveals a great deal about them.
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Rehearsal strategies
The audience becomes better informed
during thought-tracking.
Their understanding of the character is
deepened because they are, in a sense,
reading the character’s mind.
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Rehearsal strategies
This technique can be used in Forum
Theatre, when a member of the group
might ask the character what they are
thinking at a precise moment.
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Conclusion
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Conclusion
To conclude, we have considered some of the main
explorative strategies of drama.
Each one is as important as the other to produce
an overall effect on the audience.
Together, they communicate the playwright’s text.
The production produces the reaction in the
audience.
That reaction will be influenced by each technique
that is used.
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DRAMA
Conclusion
When you come to create characters, you will find
these strategies useful to begin to explore the
character’s role.
By beginning to think and feel the character, you
will deepen your understanding of the playwright’s
text and communicate the drama more effectively to
your audience.
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DRAMA
Conclusion
Just as an
audience needs
to believe in the
production, so
do you.
By using the
most
appropriate
rehearsal
strategies for
the production,
you will work
with your fellow
drama students
to create the
best possible
production.
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DRAMA
Conclusion
Each cannot work alone and produce a successful production.
By communicating with each other and experimenting with
different strategies, the production will make the most of the
playwright’s text by incorporating the most successful elements
into the play.
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