The Drama Teacher

For those of you teaching in Victoria, Australia, today was the day our Year 12 students received their final grades for their Victorian Certificate of Education in Drama and Theatre Studies.

Just wondering how teachers went with their students’ grades this year? The solo performance exam in Drama is always a tricky beast in which to predict or anticipate grades and often causes confusion among the drama teaching fraternity. Of course, students always want to do well in this task, also. Add to this what I have learned in recent years in particular … never underestimate the power of the written exam and its contribution to a student’s final study score in both these subjects, regardless of its published weighting.

If your students did well, here’s the spot to tell the world (no names or schools, please)!

On an annual basis, my Year 12 Drama class performs a short solo performance character for assessment. It is a prescribed 1-2 minute performance that requires more effort in the editing of original material to get it under the maximum time limit, than it does in the creation of material. My students are given the task of choosing a character belonging to a subculture in society, historical or present day. We usually have a wonderful array of characters and this is without doubt one of the most popular assessment tasks for students in six years of drama curriculum at my school. This year’s character choices were:

• Aussie Lad
• Gamer
• Scene Kid
• Beatnik
• Surfer
• Guido
• Chavette
• Hipster
• Greaser
• Preppie
• Rastafarian