Discussing live theatre performance Students are required to discuss and make links to live theatre performances they have experienced as a spectator during the theatre course. Students should identify performances that have influenced, inspired or informed them and should pay particular attention to how directors employed production and performance elements to create effective moments of atmosphere, emotion or tension or moments that communicated meaning in the live theatre performance experienced. The live theatre performances identified must not be productions of the same play text selected for study in this assessment task. Students are not permitted to write about productions in which they have had involvement, for example school plays in which they helped backstage or local productions in which they performed. Structuring the director’s notebook The director’s notebook, which can be up to 20 pages in length, should be a combination of creative ideas, presented in both words and visuals, along with detailed ideas and explanations. The director’s notebook should be written in the first person and present the student’s personal interpretations, responses, ideas, discoveries and intentions for the proposed staging of their selected play text. Students should be as precise and specific as possible when discussing performance and production elements. The use of subject specific terminology may help to give a sense to this precision. Students may use any relevant illustrations, annotated text, charts, mind maps, visuals, diagrams, designs and so on. These must be clearly annotated and appropriately referenced to acknowledge the source, following the protocol of the referencing style chosen by the school. When students include any of their own photographs or images, these must also be identified and acknowledged in the same way. There is no lower limit on the number of pages that students can submit for this task and teachers are encouraged to remind students that their work will be assessed on how it best fulfils the assessment criteria for the task and not judged on how many pages are submitted. The director’s notebook should contain a table of contents (which is excluded from the page count) and all pages should be numbered. The main body of the director’s notebook should be structured using the following subheadings: 1. The play text, its context and the ideas presented in the play 2. My artistic responses, creative ideas and explorations and my own experiences of live theatre as a spectator 3. My directorial intentions and the intended impact on an audience 4. How I would stage two moments of the play Students are required to submit a separate list of all sources cited.
Internal assessment tasks—SL and HL Task 4: Collaborative project SL 35%, HL 25% Introduction Students at HL and SL collaboratively create and present an original piece of theatre (lasting 13–15 minutes) to a specified target audience from a starting point selected by the ensemble. They submit a process portfolio (15 pages maximum) which documents their own individual approaches and skills, the exploration of the starting point selected by the ensemble, the nature of the collaboration and the student’s individual contribution to the creation and presentation of the piece of theatre. The student submits a video recording (4 minutes maximum) in support of the process portfolio which the student selects from the unedited video recording of the created piece. Perspective—all students approach this task in the role of collaborative creators of original theatre within an ensemble. Assessing this task Students then undertake the following process for assessment. The nature of collaboration This is a collaborative project and students must work with at least one other person and with no more than five other students (making a maximum ensemble size of six). In instances where there are fewer than two students, students may work with peers that are not in the theatre class, such as theatre students from the year below, or others who are not taking the IB Diploma Programme theatre course (as long as the ensemble size does not exceed six).
Overview of the course HJO JSM KAG Autumn 2014 Practitioners/ theorists/ styles Le Coq, Berkoff, DV8, Complicite, Frantic, Technical lessons History of Theatre and Theatre traditions Week 4/5 Directors notebook mini project-Tech and design Research presentation prep- history and Theatre traditions Log preparation- be reflective/ learner profile. Practitioners/ theorists Brecht, Stanislavski and Mike Leigh. Week 4/5 Director’s notebook mini project- Directors. Go through script extracts. Select a play text the begin the Director’s notebook Practitioners/ theorists Dario Fo, Week 4/5 Solo performance prep Explore different extracts from practitioners studied. Mini 3/5 minute performances of scripts. (can be ones they choose) Spring 2015 Research presentation prep March- Director’s note book handed Solo performance prep Sumer 2015 Research presentation prep and presentational skills. Solo prep July performance- RP delivered Theatre companies/ styles intro and devising techniques Research presentation final prep/ solo performance April – start on Theatre companies/ styles intro and devising techniques Solo performance May - Solo performance Written prep for solo performance. Autumn 2016 Collaborative project prep December- collaborative project process portfolio Draft A,B,C Collaborative project prep December- collaborative project process portfolio Draft A,B,C Sept- solo project report Collaborative project prep December- collaborative project process portfolio Draft A,B,C
Spring 2016 February- Collaborative project performance March/ April- Process Portfolio completed February- Collaborative project performance March/ April- Process Portfolio completed February- Collaborative project performance March/ April- Process Portfolio completed Key- final dead line, General theory that applies to multiple aspects of the course