New Zealand Scholarship Drama Assessment flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Given circumstances

The facts of a character's world - time, place, relationships, history, and social position - that an actor uses to justify behaviour and build believable action in a scene.

Subtext

The meaning beneath the spoken words: what a character actually wants or feels in contrast to what the dialogue literally says. Actors play subtext through intention and physical action.

Blocking

The planned pattern of an actor's movement and stage positions within a scene, fixed in rehearsal so that focus, sightlines, and dramatic relationships stay consistent across performances.

Proxemics

The use of physical distance between performers or between performer and audience to communicate relationship, status, tension, or intimacy without dialogue.

Status transaction

The moment-by-moment negotiation of dominance and submission between characters, expressed through posture, eye contact, space, and vocal weight rather than stated in the script.

Dramatic tension

The pressure created by unresolved want, risk, or conflict that keeps an audience anticipating. It is built through obstacles, stakes, pacing, and withheld information.

Objectives and tactics

An objective is what a character wants in a scene; tactics are the actions used to get it. Playing tactics as active verbs keeps performance specific and playable.

Units and beats

A scene divided into smaller sections where the character's objective or tactic changes. Naming beats gives rehearsal structure and reveals where the drama actually shifts.

Theatrical conventions

Agreed non-realistic devices - soliloquy, chorus, direct address, mask, mime, split stage, narration - that an audience accepts as part of the production's storytelling grammar.

Fourth wall

The imagined boundary between performers and audience in realistic staging. Breaking it turns the audience into an addressed presence and changes the register of the performance.

Sightlines

The lines of vision from audience seating to the stage. Blocking and design must keep key action visible from all seats, especially in traverse or thrust configurations.

Stage geography

Standard stage directions: upstage is away from the audience, downstage toward it, stage left and right are the performer's left and right when facing the audience.

Focus and emphasis

Directing the audience's attention through staging, lighting, movement, or vocal emphasis so that the intended moment, character, or object dominates the stage picture.

Stage picture

The composition formed by performers, set, and properties at any moment, judged for balance, levels, and clarity of story rather than visual prettiness alone.

Vocal projection

Sustaining supported breath and forward resonance so speech reaches the back of the auditorium clearly, without losing articulation or damaging the voice.

Articulation and diction

Precise formation of consonants and vowels so meaning is clear at performance volume. Diction serves intelligibility; it must survive accent, pace, and emotional intensity.

Physical score

The rehearsed sequence of gestures, postures, and movements that make up a role, repeatable night to night and shaped by character physicality rather than random impulse.

Character physicality

The distinctive posture, rhythm, weight, and habitual movement that identify a character, chosen from given circumstances and age, occupation, health, and status.

Ensemble playing

Performing as a responsive collective: listening, picking up cues, sharing focus, and adjusting timing so the scene belongs to the group rather than one actor.

Rehearsal process evidence

Documentation of decisions, experiments, and revisions across rehearsal, showing how the final performance was developed rather than merely describing the finished product.

Directorial concept

A unifying interpretation of a script - setting, period, style, and central idea - that justifies every design and performance choice and can be stated in one sentence.

Design integration

The alignment of set, costume, lighting, sound, and makeup with the concept and with each other, so technical elements tell the same story as the acting.

Lighting states

Named combinations of intensity, colour, angle, and specials used to define location, time, mood, and focus. Cue sheets record the sequence and timing of these states.

Sound design

Planned use of music, effects, and silence to establish place, heighten tension, cover transitions, and shape audience rhythm. Levels must serve, not overwhelm, the voice.

Costume as character

Costume choices communicate period, status, occupation, and self-image, and must allow the movement and quick changes the performance requires.

Theatre form and style

The recognised mode of a production - naturalism, expressionism, physical theatre, verbatim, commedia, epic theatre - each with its own conventions, acting demands, and audience contract.

New Zealand drama context

Awareness of local playwrights, companies, bicultural practice, and touring realities that shape New Zealand theatre, used to situate the candidate's own work credibly.

Live performance analysis

Describing a specific production's choices - staging, acting, design, audience response - and evaluating their effect with evidence, not plot summary or unsupported opinion.

Intention and effect

The stated purpose behind a theatrical choice and the observable result for the audience. Strong reflection links the two and admits where they diverged.

Risk and revision

Deliberate experimentation in rehearsal, followed by honest evaluation of what failed and what changed. Evidence of revision demonstrates artistic judgement.

Reflective annotation

Brief written commentary attached to process evidence, explaining the reasoning behind a decision and what it achieved, using precise theatre terminology.

Audience contract

The unspoken agreement about how a production will communicate - realistic, presentational, participatory - that performers establish early and must sustain consistently.