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Theatre
Course outline
The focus of this exciting course is Theatre as a form of creative and cultural enquiry.
IB Theatre gives you the opportunity to make theatre as a creator, designer, director and performer. Over the course of the two years you will be expected to research and develop your understanding of a range of world theatre and to experiment with different ways of presenting work to an audience.
Assessment: 100% coursework All students complete three pieces of coursework, with Higher Level students completing a fourth coursework piece. There is no final examination.
All students complete the following tasks: Director’s notebook: Students choose a published play text and develop ideas regarding how it might be staged for an audience.
Research presentation: Students plan and deliver an individual presentation (15 minutes maximum) to their peers in which they outline and physically demonstrate their research into a convention of a theatre tradition they have not previously studied.
Collaborative theatre project: Students collaborate, and create and present an original piece of theatre (lasting 13 to 15 minutes) for and to a specified target audience, created from a starting point of their choice.
Higher Level students also complete the following task: Solo theatre piece: Students research a chosen theatre theorist. They identify an aspect(s) of the theorist’s ideas and create and present a solo theatre piece (4-8 minutes) based on this aspect(s) of theory.
As with A Level Theatre Studies, the IB course opens doors into the world of Theatre, Film, Broadcasting and Digital Media. The student will gain a wide understanding of the different skills involved and also gain intellectual comprehension of how ‘action research’ impacts on development in these converging spheres. Other professions relying on confident use of interpersonal skills- such as Law, Advertising, Museum Curating, Teaching and Politics- are well served by the groundwork of completing this expansive course. The level of awareness of Internationalism within contextualised cultural appreciation also leads naturally to careers in the Civil Service, Foreign Office or International Business.
Students are involved in a wide range of creative activities. Alongside the numerous visits organised to local and London theatres, the department offers the IB student the opportunity to participate as a mentor and leader in whole-school and Sixth Form performances. Recent productions include: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’; ‘A Christmas Carol’; ‘Oh! What A Lovely War’; ‘Guys and Dolls’; ‘The Crucible’; ‘Antigone’ and ‘The Tempest’.
