Drama and Theatre Studies
This qualification is a welcome recent addition to the curriculum at Queen 
Elizabeth’s Grammar School and it is an extension of the Drama provided within the English curriculum. It offers opportunities for experimental learning; pupils acquire both a practical and theoretical understanding of the subject, through a balanced approach. This ensures that pupils are provided with skills and abilities that are transferable to alternative contexts.
The increasingly popular Drama Club ensures that pupils are given every opportunity to acquire the basic skills necessary for successful progression in Drama at A Level.
Aims
- Provide pupils with opportunities to explore relevant issues from various perspectives
- Stimulate their creative and emotional intelligence
- Develop their skills as independent and reflective learners
- Ensure that pupils acquire an appreciation of live theatre and enhance their critical thinking
- Activate pupils’ intellectual curiosity for the range of dramatic literature and stimuli through formative and summative assessment.
Teaching and Learning
The department strives continually to ensure that teaching methods combine both progressive and traditional teaching methods. To this end, lessons are a mixture of group, pair and individual work. The majority of lessons in the Sixth Form have an independent approach and pupils are able through discussion to explore the relationship between drama, theatre and society. This method of learning enables pupils to appreciate the fact that the study of drama has always been related to its historical and social contexts, and often reflects the politics and attitudes which have been responsible for its birth. All this provides an environment which is both dynamic and stimulating yet at the same time productive.
Workshops are an integral part of the learning process and students are encouraged to consolidate their learning experiences by working on group projects for examination purposes or to further expand their knowledge in a particular skill, whether this is lighting, sound, set design or just simply improving their performance skills.
Other teaching methods include all of the following: role play, audio-visual, practical exploration of the set text, scripted performances, devised and improvised drama. research and theatre visits.
Facilities and Resources
The department is based on the top floor of Hartley House and has two areas which facilitate the delivery of the subject at AS and A2 Level. The bespoke drama studio is fully equipped with staging, lighting and some sound resources. However, each space is multi-functional and can be used as rehearsal, performance and teaching space. The department has a whiteboard and computer, both of which are used as part of the teaching and learning in this subject area. The department has a wide selection of drama texts, reference books, and finally, a number of software programmes to aid pupils’ understanding of dramatic techniques.
Curriculum Allocation and Courses
At A Level, certificated by AQA, Drama and Theatre Studies enables pupils to refine their practical and theoretical understanding of drama, as both participant and informed audience member.
The AS Unit tests pupils’ ability to analyse a play from a performance perspective and assess their critical and evaluative judgement of live theatre. Finally, the study of a prescribed practitioner and application of those concepts to the performance of an extract from a published play.
In A2 pupils will study two further set plays ranging from Middleton to Chekhov and are able to demonstrate a more advanced level of performance/production skills.
All the above will involve the writing of critical essays, the study of genres, fashions, philosophical movements, legislation, changing audiences and scientific developments which provoke theatrical change.
Extra-Curricular
The Drama Department works closely with the English Department and the Library and a number of clubs and activities are made available, dependent on the needs and interests of the pupils.
Theatre trips are integral to the success of the department and trips in the last year include Death of a Salesman, Tartuffe, The Crucible, Our Country’s Good, Romeo and Juliet.
Each year the department hosts a Drama Showcase in which A Level students present the fruits of their labours to a selective audience.
There is also a school production each year. Last year the department showcased a very successful production of The Crucible.
