Shared Drama Content: Characteristics, Context and Communication of Meaning

The exam cannot ask about your play

Different schools study different plays. Seven of them are allowed, and the paper has to work for all seven at once. A student who studied one text and a student who studied another sit the same exam, in the same room, on the same day. ⚠️ WHICH MEANS THE QUESTION CANNOT BE ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS IN YOUR PLAY. IT CANNOT BE, BECAUSE THE PERSON NEXT TO YOU READ A DIFFERENT ONE. Students find this out too late and it costs them badly. They revise the plot. They memorise the order of events. And then the question asks something their retelling cannot answer. ⭐ WHAT THE QUESTION ASKS INSTEAD IS WHAT THE PLAYWRIGHT DID TO THE AUDIENCE. Your play is not the subject of the answer. It is the evidence you happen to have brought. So what does a playwright actually do? Strip away everything else and one thing is left, and it is the thing that is examined over and over. ⭐⭐ A PLAYWRIGHT CONTROLS WHAT THE AUDIENCE KNOWS. When you learn something. When a character learns it, which is often much later, or never. How long you are made to wait in between. ⚠️ AND THAT IS WHAT TENSION ACTUALLY IS. NOT A MOOD. NOT ATMOSPHERE. NOT SOMETHING THE MUSIC DOES. ⭐ TENSION IS THE GAP BETWEEN WHAT THE AUDIENCE KNOWS AND WHAT THEY WANT TO KNOW, HELD OPEN ON PURPOSE. Open the gap and an audience leans in. Close it too early and they relax, which is sometimes exactly what you want and usually a mistake. Never close it at all and they leave unsettled, which some playwrights choose deliberately. Once you can see the gap, the whole paper changes shape. An opening is a decision about what to tell you first and what to keep back. A closing scene is a decision about what to release and what to leave open. A stage direction is how a playwright controls a reveal without giving anyone a line to say. ⭐ AND THE LIGHTING, THE SOUND, THE DISTANCE BETWEEN TWO ACTORS AND THE LENGTH OF A PAUSE ARE ALL THE SAME CONTROL BY OTHER MEANS. One test, and it works in any of the seven plays: at this moment, who knows what, and who does not?

What the gap is doing at each point

Key element four of this topic is structural choices. Here is the whole of it as one idea: the same gap, managed differently at three points in a play.

Tap what this actually claims

Tap the TWO statements that follow from tension being a gap in what the audience knows.

• Your set text is the evidence in an answer, not the subject of it
• An opening can be judged by what it holds back as much as by what it shows
• Tension is produced mainly by music and lighting rather than by information
• The safest preparation is to learn the plot of your play in as much detail as possible

Where the tension is coming from

In a scene, the audience has watched a character hide something. A second character now walks in and asks a perfectly ordinary question. The scene is unbearable to watch. Why?

• Because the audience knows something the second character does not, so every ordinary line is being read two ways at once
• Because the actors will be performing it with a great deal of intensity
• Because the lighting and sound will have been designed to build unease
• Because the words of the question must carry a hidden threat

Five words worth having precisely

Five terms, each defined by what it is. What each one does to an audience is the work of the steps that follow, and is not given here.

Match each moment to what it does to the gap

Two that follow from the gap

Select the TWO statements that follow from a playwright controlling what the audience knows.

• Context matters because it changes what an audience already knows walking in, so the same moment opens a different-sized gap for a first audience and for one today
• A design choice can do the same job as a line of dialogue, because it can withhold or reveal information just as a line can
• Genre is only a label for filing a play and has no effect on how an audience watches it
• The strongest preparation for a closed-book exam is to memorise as many quotations as possible

Writing it when the text is not in front of you

You already know the thing that makes OCR different from the other boards: this is a fully closed-book exam, with no notes to bring in. ⚠️ THAT IS USUALLY MET AS BAD NEWS. IT IS ACTUALLY THE STRONGEST ARGUMENT FOR REVISING A MECHANISM RATHER THAN A PLOT. If you cannot look anything up, then long quotations are the worst possible thing to lean on. You will half-remember them, you will doubt them while writing, and a misquoted line is worth nothing. ⭐ BUT A MOMENT YOU CAN DESCRIBE ACCURATELY IS WORTH A GREAT DEAL, AND YOU NEED VERY FEW OF THEM. ⭐ SO REVISE FIVE OR SIX MOMENTS, NOT FIFTY LINES. For each one, know what the audience knows at that point, what the characters know, and what the playwright did to the difference. That is portable. It survives a question you did not expect, because the mechanism is the same whatever the question asks you to look at. ⚠️ AND A SHAPE FOR THE ANSWER ITSELF, WHICH WORKS WHATEVER YOUR SET TEXT IS. NAME THE MOMENT. Precisely enough that a marker who knows the play can find it. SAY WHAT THE AUDIENCE KNOWS THERE, AND WHAT THE CHARACTER DOES NOT. This is the sentence most answers skip, and it is the one carrying the idea. SAY WHAT THE PLAYWRIGHT DID. Withheld it, delayed it, released it early, gave it to us and not to them. THEN SAY WHAT THAT DOES TO THE AUDIENCE, and be specific about which audience, because a first audience and an audience today do not start from the same place. ⚠️ TWO HABITS THAT COST MARKS ON THIS PAPER IN PARTICULAR. ⚠️ THE FIRST IS RETELLING THE PLOT. It is the commonest failure here, and it is usually a sign of having revised the story rather than the mechanism. A marker cannot credit events; they can only credit what you say about them. ⚠️ THE SECOND IS CALLING SOMETHING TENSE AND STOPPING THERE. That is the conclusion, not the reasoning. The mark is for saying what the audience was not being told.

One moment, taken apart

Here is a shape you will find somewhere in whichever of the seven plays you studied. It is worth learning as a shape, because then you can go and find your own version of it. A character has done something they are hiding. The audience watched them do it. Nobody else on stage did. ⭐ NOTICE WHAT THE PLAYWRIGHT HAS ALREADY SPENT TO BUY THIS. They gave the audience information and refused it to the characters, and from this moment on the audience is watching two plays at once: the ordinary one the characters think they are in, and the real one. Now a second character comes in and says something entirely ordinary. Asks where someone is. Comments on the weather. Offers a cup of tea. ⚠️ AND THE SCENE IS ALMOST UNBEARABLE, WITHOUT A SINGLE DRAMATIC LINE IN IT. Every harmless sentence now carries a second meaning that only you can hear. The audience is not waiting to find out what happened, because they already know. They are waiting to find out WHEN the other person will, and how bad it will be. ⭐ THE PLAYWRIGHT HAS CHANGED THE QUESTION THE AUDIENCE IS ASKING, AND THAT IS THE SKILL. Watch how the rest of the scene can be stretched without adding anything. The script can call for a silence before a reply, and you will fill it yourself with everything you are afraid is about to happen. The two performers can be kept at opposite sides of the stage, so that the distance between them is doing the work that no line is doing. Someone can almost find out, and be interrupted. ⚠️ NONE OF THAT IS NEW INFORMATION. ALL OF IT MAKES THE WAIT WORSE. And then the ending has a decision to make, and it is a real one. Let the second character find out on stage, and you release everything at once: the audience lets its breath out, and the play is telling you that truth comes out. Let the curtain fall with them still not knowing, and the audience leaves carrying it. ⭐ THE SETTLING AFTER THE WORST HAS HAPPENED IS WHERE A PLAY TELLS YOU WHAT IT THINKS, AND A PLAY THAT REFUSES TO SETTLE IS TELLING YOU SOMETHING TOO. ⚠️ WHEN YOU WRITE ABOUT A MOMENT LIKE THIS, THE MARKS ARE NOT IN THE STORY. THEY ARE IN THE SENTENCE THAT SAYS WHO KNEW WHAT, AND WHAT THE WAITING DID TO THE PEOPLE WATCHING.

Order how a scene works the gap

Put these six moments into the order that opens the gap, holds it open, and then decides what to do with it.

• The audience watches something happen that no other character sees
• A character who missed it comes in and speaks about something ordinary
• The audience begins reading every ordinary line for a second meaning
• The character almost discovers it, and is interrupted
• A silence is held before a reply, and the audience fills it themselves
• The scene ends, and the playwright decides whether to tell them or not

Build the sentence most answers skip

This is the sentence that carries the idea, and it is the one students leave out. Assemble it.

The shared content run

Five questions on the gap, and on writing about it without the text in front of you. Three lives.

Complete the shared content facts

A situation in which the audience holds information a character on stage does not is _____. The passages supplying the background an audience needs in order to follow events are the _____. The final part of a play, after the main conflict has broken, is the _____. The use of distance and position between performers on stage is _____.

Three answers to put right

Three students preparing for this paper. In each case the mark is in the reasoning, not the verdict.

• A student has written a detailed account of everything that happens in their set text, in order, and plans to revise it. What would you tell them?
• An answer says a scene is tense because the lighting is dim and the music is unsettling. How would you strengthen it?
• Asked about context, a student writes two paragraphs of historical background before mentioning the play. What has gone wrong?

Write about a moment from your own play

Choose one moment from the set text you studied, where the audience knows something a character does not. Explain how the playwright uses it and what it does to an audience.

• Name the moment precisely enough that someone who knows the play could find it, without retelling the plot around it
• Say what the audience knows at that point, and what the character does not
• Say what the playwright did to the difference: withheld it, delayed it, released it early, or gave it to us and not to them
• Explain what that does to the audience watching, and name which audience you mean
• Explain how one staging, design or performance choice holds that gap open rather than creating it
• Finish by saying what the ending does with the gap, and why leaving it open or closing it changes what the play is saying