Paper 2: Drama

1. Paper 2: Drama Exam Preparation

2. Before you enter the examination room…. • You need to feel confident about the dramas we have studied: you should have thoroughly reviewed each drama and be able to draw on quotations to substantiate your interpretations • You need to be conscious of the assessment criteria and aware of how to structure a successful genre based essay • Are you aware of the assessment criteria?

3. Remember assessment criteria: A: Knowledge and Understanding B: Response to the question C: Appreciation of literary features D: Presentation (structure) E: Use of language

4. 1. Decoding the question… “A play should make you laugh or should make you cry.” With reference to at least two plays you have studied, discuss the methods playwrights use to generate emotional response in their audiences. You need to ensure you address all aspects of this question: • What emotional response to the authors evoke? • How have the dramatists generated this emotional response (dramatic techniques)? • Historical/cultural context • To what effect (theme)?

5. 2. Planning • You may only choose the questions listed under “drama”. • Ascertain which dramas are relevant to the question. You need to refer to at least two. • Consider how you are going to link these dramas in response to the question: how do they fit together? Are there striking connections/ differences? Think about how they work collectively as a group to assert a central thesis in response to the question.

6. What dramas would work well for the prompt regarding eliciting emotion? How can they be linked?What is your central thesis?

7. Writing your introduction • Directly address the question and assert which dramas you intend to explore in response to the question (include title and author) • Drama 1: relevance to the prompt: be precise! • Drama 2: relevance to the prompt: be precise! • How can both dramas be linked together in response to the prompt? • What is your main thesis / line of argument?

8. SAMPLE INTRO: Stage 1: addressing the question: Frustration is an emotion experienced by the audiences of both Samuel Beckett and Tom Stoppard; these playwrights elicit this emotion to engage the viewers in an examination of the absurdity within the modern world. Stage 2: Drama 1: relevance to question: In Waiting for GodotSamuel Beckett utilizes an ironically sparse setting, symbolic characterization, and circular dialogue to frustrate his audience with the inaction of his main characters.

9. Stage 3: Drama 2: relevance to question: Similarly, Tom Stoppard, in the drama, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, employs meta-theatrical performances and the motif of gambling to construct an agonizing demonstration of the tendency of man to rationalize the irrational. Stage 4: drawing poems together to assert a central thesis In both absurdist dramas the playwrights evoke frustration within their audiences effectively to illustrate the hollow, absurd nature of the modern man who…

10. Writing the essay: you need to be conscious of… • The portrayal of important themes or ideas • The effects of dramatic techniques • The connotations of language the subsequent audience response • The historical/cultural contexts that are driving the themes and purpose of the works • You MUST: • Integrate quotations to support your ideas • Always ensure your ideas are relevant to the question

11. Structure needs to be… • Coherent, focused and purposeful, with a sense of progressive argument in response to the question • You can talk about dramas separately to ensure rigorous analysis, but there needs to be a clear transition between plays / paragraphs • Build up to a logical conclusion in which you: • draw all the dramas you have analyzed together to show the connections between them and their relevance to the title question. • explicitly answer the title question. • say something of substance – avoid merely regurgitating what you have written earlier.