PAU Catalonia Performing Arts II common mistakes
PAU Catalonia Performing Arts II · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
In the text-analysis question, the candidate retells the plot of the fragment and stops there, never naming the internal structure (exposition, knot, climax, resolution or the sequence of units of action) or the type of conflict that organises it.
Under exam pressure the narrative content is the easiest thing to paraphrase, so the candidate writes what happens instead of analysing how the text is built; many candidates have never practised labelling units of action on an unseen fragment.
What to do instead
Adopt a fixed written routine for any dramatic fragment: (1) identify the speakers and the dramatic situation in one line; (2) segment the fragment into units of action and mark the turning point; (3) name the conflict (individual vs. individual, vs. environment, vs. self, vs. fate) and say which character carries each side; (4) state the genre markers and the implied offstage space. Practise this on ten short fragments from different periods until the routine takes under ten minutes.
When asked to comment on a character, the candidate lists personality adjectives (brave, cruel, jealous) without grounding them in what the character does, says, is said about them, or the stage directions, and without linking the character to the play's conflict or function in the structure.
School essay habits reward descriptive character sketches, and candidates confuse psychological impression with dramatic analysis; they also forget that a character in a play exists only through text, action and reception.
What to do instead
Build every character answer from four evidence columns: what the character says, what others say about them, what they do on stage, and what the stage directions or dramaturgy impose. Then add one sentence on dramatic function (protagonist, antagonist, confidant, raisonneur, foil) and one on how the character embodies the play's conflict. Quote or paraphrase a specific line as proof in each paragraph.
In the history-of-theatre question, the candidate produces a chronological list of names and dates with no causal argument, and mixes up periods (for example attributing unities of time and place to medieval theatre, or treating commedia dell'arte as a written literary genre).
Revision is often done as date-and-title memorisation from summaries, so facts are stored without the institutional context (festival, court, church, commercial company) that explains why each form appeared.
What to do instead
Study each period through four anchors: the performance venue and occasion, the performer-audience relationship, the dominant text type, and one representative work with a concrete feature. For any comparison question, write a thesis sentence first (e.g. 'Baroque theatre changes the spectator's position rather than the actor's technique') and support it with two named works. Keep a one-page comparison grid for pairs that are frequently confused: Greek vs. Roman, medieval religious vs. farce, Neoclassical vs. Romantic, naturalism vs. symbolism.
The candidate treats contemporary and Catalan theatre as a single undifferentiated block, citing only one or two famous names and ignoring companies, collective creation, text-based vs. devised work, and the role of Catalan institutions and venues.
Syllabus coverage of the contemporary period is often rushed, and candidates rely on general knowledge about the best-known playwrights without knowing the current landscape of companies, festivals and public theatres.
What to do instead
Prepare a short dossier of at least six recent Catalan productions or companies and for each note: who makes it (playwright, director, company), where it premiered, what textual or staging strategy defines it, and which tradition it continues or breaks. Learn to distinguish a playwright's theatre from a director's or company's theatre, and be ready to name a public institution and a festival as part of the ecosystem.
In performance analysis, the candidate describes the story of the production and praises it ('it was very moving') instead of analysing the staging choices: spatial arrangement, blocking, use of levels, scenographic materials, lighting states, costume logic, sound and music, and acting register.
Candidates watch productions as spectators, not as analysts, and have no vocabulary for describing stage sign systems; they also fear that technical description is not 'interpretation'.
What to do instead
Prepare a checklist of production signs (space, set materials, light, costume, sound, acting style, tempo, audience configuration) and use it in every answer. For each element, write what it does rather than what it is: not 'the set was grey' but 'the grey concrete walls and absence of furniture enclosed the actors, reinforcing the play's claustrophobia'. Always connect one technical choice to one meaning.
The candidate analyses direction and acting without distinguishing the layers: text, dramaturgy, direction, actor's work, and design, and attributes to the playwright what was a directorial decision, or judges acting only by emotional intensity rather than by technique (voice, gesture, rhythm, relation to the partner and to the audience).
The roles are invisible in the final product, so candidates collapse them; acting is also the element audiences feel most directly, which encourages evaluative rather than technical comment.
What to do instead
For every production analysed, write five short labelled lines: text (what the play is), dramaturgy (what was cut, added, reordered), direction (concept, spatial and tempo choices), acting (register, technique, ensemble vs. star), design (set, light, costume, sound). When judging acting, name a technique: vocal placement, physical score, use of pause, focus, interaction with the audience. Never credit the director's concept to the author without evidence from the text.
In questions on theatre and society, the candidate answers with vague statements ('theatre is important for culture', 'the audience likes comedy') instead of discussing the audience as a specific social group, the economics of production, criticism as mediation, or the function of cultural institutions and public policy.
This domain looks 'easy' and discursive, so candidates do not prepare concrete data, concepts or examples, and they lack a framework for talking about reception and cultural policy.
What to do instead
Prepare named examples for each sub-topic: one public theatre and its programming model, one festival, one critical outlet and its role, one example of audience development or community theatre. Learn the distinction between subsidised and commercial production, between audience as co-creator and as consumer, and between descriptive and evaluative criticism. In answers, always move from a general claim to a named case in the same sentence.
The candidate writes long, unstructured answers with no thesis, no paragraphing and no conclusion, so the examiner cannot find the analytical point; often the answer starts with a definition and never reaches the question asked.
Time pressure and the habit of writing everything known about a topic lead to knowledge dumping; candidates also misread the command word (comment, compare, analyse, justify) and answer the wrong type of question.
What to do instead
Spend the first minute underlining the command word and the object of the question, then write a one-sentence thesis at the top. Use a fixed paragraph pattern: claim, evidence from the text or production, analysis of how the evidence supports the claim. Reserve two minutes to write a conclusion that answers the question directly. Practise under timed conditions with a 5-minute plan, 20-minute body, 3-minute check.
The candidate cites works, authors or productions from memory with wrong dates, wrong authorship or invented titles, and does not distinguish what they know from what they are guessing.
Revision relies on vague recall and candidates prefer to fill space with a plausible name rather than leave a gap; there is no habit of verifying a small core of facts.
What to do instead
Build a verified core list of around twenty works with author, approximate date, period and one defining feature, and learn those precisely. In the exam, if a title or date is uncertain, describe the work by its features ('a Spanish Golden Age honour drama') rather than inventing a title. Accuracy of a few well-chosen examples scores higher than a long list of doubtful ones.
The candidate ignores the specific Catalan context when a question invites it, answering only with general European theatre history or only with Spanish-language examples, and never connects a Catalan playwright, company or institution to the question's concept.
Candidates prepare the international canon thoroughly and treat the local syllabus as optional, or they lack confidence in the Catalan terminology and avoid it.
What to do instead
For each major concept in the syllabus (conflict, staging, audience, criticism), prepare at least one Catalan example ready to deploy, with the correct terminology in Catalan (escenografia, dramatúrgia, posada en escena, públic, crítica). In comparative answers, place the Catalan case alongside the international one and state explicitly what it shares and what it does differently.