WACE ATAR Drama case studies
WACE ATAR Drama · Put your knowledge to work in context.
WACE ATAR Drama is a Western Australian senior-secondary course and external assessment pair taken over Years 11 and 12, typically by students who intend to use Drama as one of their four or five ATAR subjects for university entrance or who are building a pathway into performance, design, education or arts administration. It is not a single written paper: candidates are assessed through school-based tasks across the course, a practical production and performance examination, and a written examination that tests analysis of live theatre, interpretation of play texts and knowledge of drama theory, styles, conventions and practitioners. The WACE ATAR Drama case studies are 5 cases and about 3,516 words.
1The Vanishing Wings
A Year 12 student directs a 12-minute ensemble excerpt from a non-naturalistic play for an assessment. The performance space is a black-box studio with a fixed lighting rig of six fresnels and four LED wash units, a ceiling height of 3.2 m and a usable stage footprint of 5 m by 4 m.
704 words, about 4 min2Reading the Room: Evaluating a School Production
A student attends a live school production of a contemporary Australian play and must write a 600-word dramatic analysis and evaluation for assessment. The production ran 95 minutes with no interval in a 180-seat school theatre.
733 words, about 4 min3Staging the Unstageable Scene
A class is studying a play text containing a scene in which a character is drowned offstage and the body is carried on. The text's stage directions are sparse: 'A crash of water.
685 words, about 3 min4Devising from a Provocation
Five students must create an 8-minute original/devised piece from the provocation 'the things we carry'. They have four weeks (eight 60-minute sessions) and no script.
678 words, about 3 min5Lighting a Black Box on a Shoestring
A student is the lighting designer for a 20-minute school production in a black-box studio. The rig consists of six fresnels (two front, two side, two back), four LED wash units (two upstage, two downstage), and one follow spot that is unreliable and sometimes flickers.
716 words, about 4 min