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    Digital Media and Design overview


    Component 3 - Theatre-making and performing
    Group devised drama

    • Part 1 Devised piece (40 marks) - Example 1

      The video recording quality of these performances are poor. It is important to create good quality video evidence of performances for every candidate in the sample you send to Cambridge. We have created a guide to filming better videos and teachers are advised to watch this guide before filming evidence for Cambridge.

      • Devised piece - 'Meet the Hastings'


      show/hide  Commentary on devised piece

      The piece lasts for approximately 16 minutes.

      The devised piece with four performers is an ensemble in the style of Steven Berkoff, titled "Meet the Hastings", focused on a physical satirical representation of a wealthy family. There are echoes of Berkoff's Decadence in the subject matter; and the centre acknowledges in the marking that that their candidates pursued Berkoff's social preoccupations. The piece begins with the family in a stacked position using typically minimal staging, in this case two desks stacked on top of one another; a stage and a floor area, providing two levels for performance, and a screen for projection. All other furniture is created by use of the actors' bodies, as is typical of Berkoff's Total Theatre. The family stack position represents a hierarchy, father at top, mother below and the two daughters below; this is the default position to which they return between episodes. They begin by asking what the father has been doing, then shift to a physical representation of his car sales business and a poor family seeking to buy a car. This is followed by the representation of a family car trip to Devon, (a holiday area). The representation of a car evokes the motorcycle scene in Berkoff's  East but is sufficiently different to be considered original devising. This is followed by another family scene, discussing the daughters' complaints about their privileged school, which becomes an ensemble chant and a dance. The return to the family stack positioning gives rise to a scene which plays out a scene of one of the daughters at ballet class, in which a poor ballet student is introduced and physically humiliated by the frightening ballet teacher and the class; culminating in the shock and outrage played out when the poor girl is drinking from the wealthy girl's water bottle.

      Returning to the family stack position, the next scene introduced is the mother's plastic surgery, conducted in physical theatre behind a white sheet. There is projection of a representation of the mother's face behind the group action. As film, this is not assessed and is something of an additional element to the essential action. The group represent her being both brought in for surgery and being wheeled out with a grotesque face after 'the procedure' and no longer able to speak normally and unable to close her mouth, with a face now somewhat reminiscent of Munch's The Scream. The restaurant scene which follows is perhaps somewhat reminiscent of dining scenes in Berkoff's own work, and is a representation of excess, typical of Berkoff's work. The final scene, after the family return home after over-eating at the restaurant only to be horrified to discover the poor girl is now a neighbour, is a series of describing waking moments for the girl and the father character, clearly an overtly intended reference to the opening of Berkoff's adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis. The piece ends with an ensemble representation of greed personified as an all-consuming monster.


    • Part 1 Devised piece (40 marks) - Example 2

      • Devised piece - 'Time of death'


      show/hide  Commentary on devised piece

      The piece lasts for approximately 15 minutes.

      This devised piece with four performers is an ensemble in the tradition and style of Commedia Dell'Arte, titled "Time of Death", a comic intrigue relating to the death of a patient while being operated on by Dottore. The tradition is of semi-improvised action around a chosen scenario. The characters matter more than the loose and farcical plot; their comic behaviour matters most.

      For the masked characters, the costume, the comic exaggeration of actors' bodies and their actions are essential characteristics to make Commedia Dell'Arte recognisable. This is readily achieved at the first appearance of the Arlecchino character. Although sometimes and perhaps most familiarly portrayed with a harlequin mask, the black mask is also traditional, and the costume can also vary, as it did in early Italian street theatre in which the genre originates. Accordingly, although the costume is not highly attentive to detail, this is in the nature of the form and the characters are all readily identifiable. Isabella is appropriately without a mask, and the addition of a modern phone on which she is conversing with her lover is a comic touch which would also be appropriate to the genre, as the improvisational actors would readily use whatever would bring comedy to the moment. So it is comic to juxtapose traditional costume while talking to the most modern technology carried by nearly everyone today.

      The narrative is an episode rather than a complete play, which is in keeping with the tradition. A patient dies on the operating table, comically represented by a pair of feet on a table under a sheet. Arlecchino has been helping Dottore with the operation. Pantalone enters with distinctive gait after the table is cleared and is told the patient has died by an 'accident', for which it appears he will be liable for a lot of money. Some comic dialogue ensues in which none of them seem to know what an appendix is. They decide to cover up the 'accident' as a death from untreatable causes. Isabella appears alone in the next scene, talking comically to her lover on her mobile phone. She wants to find her husband's Will but cannot locate it. In the next scene Pantalone informs Isabella that her husband has died. Her over-dramatic cries end when he suggests she may now be 'loaded' but begin again when he lustfully tries to engage with her across the desk. When he leaves Arlecchino suggests conspiring with her that the 'papers' may be with the body in the morgue. Arlecchino sets off to find them then overhears Dottore wrestling with his conscience about the death, and they agree he should confess to Isabella that he is responsible, who is still searching for the Will. When he does so Isabella thinks to herself greedily about the money; in a split scene with Isabella and Dottore in the background Arlecchino tells Pantalone that Dottore is going to confess his responsibility to Isabella; Pantalone is angry as he will be liable to pay, and comes up with the idea that someone should impersonate the husband to make Isabella believe that the husband has not died. Pantalone tells Arlecchino to take on this role. He appears at Isabella's door as the husband; she faints.

      This is farcical and it is evident that this story would need to continue, becoming more entangled and presumably to a comic denouement. The Group does not have to show the continuation of the plot for their devised piece to be complete.

    • Candidates in the order they present themselves


      Candidates in order of merit

      Candidate

      Use of tradition, practice or A style to create a piece of theatre as performers or designers

      (10 marks)

      B Role or design; structure; interaction ensemble 

      (20 marks)

      C Quality of analysis and evaluation

      (10 marks)

      Total mark awarded

      (40 marks)

      Candidate 1

      10

      20

      6

      36

      Candidate 3

      10

      19

      6

      35

      Candidate 4

      10

      18

      7

      35

      Candidate 2

      7

      15

      6

      28


    • Devised piece: Candidate 1

      The annotation and comments on the "Written analysis and evaluation" have been made by the centre.




      Devised piece: Candidate 2

      The annotation and comments on the "Written analysis and evaluation" have been made by the centre.




      Devised piece: Candidate 3

      The annotation and comments on the "Written analysis and evaluation" have been made by the centre.




      Devised piece: Candidate 4

      The annotation and comments on the "Written analysis and evaluation" and "Individual Candidate Mark Sheet" have been made by the centre.