Choosing Your Production and Using Your Notes Allowance

The one part you decide in advance

Everything else in this exam happens on the day. This does not. You choose which production to write about, and you are allowed to bring up to 500 words of notes you prepared yourself, attached to an official form. Which means the marks lost in this section are usually lost weeks earlier, quietly. By picking a production that gives you almost nothing to write about. By choosing a show that is not permitted at all. By spending 200 of your 500 words retelling the plot. This module is about those decisions. The writing itself, the analyse and evaluate registers, is a different module and is already built.

Five terms that decide what you can do

These are administrative rather than dramatic, and getting them wrong costs more than any vocabulary error:

Which TWO could you NOT use?

Four productions, all invented for this module, all of which a class actually went to see. Select the TWO that could NOT be used for this section.

• A touring production of DNA
• "Salt and Silver", a new musical sung from beginning to end with no spoken dialogue
• "The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter", a new play with full set, costume, sound and lighting design
• "Two Chairs", a studio piece performed on a bare stage by two actors

The five criteria, in full

There are five, and this is all of them. Check a production against the list BEFORE you book the ticket, not afterwards. 1. Not a Component 3 prescribed text. Check your set-text list first. 2. Not sung-through in its entirety. A production sung from start to finish is out. 3. A range of production elements. Costume, set, sound and lighting. The more of them the production actually uses, the more you have to write about. 4. Opportunities to analyse and evaluate performers, directors AND designers. The questions can ask about any of the three, so all three need to be visible in what you saw. 5. Opportunities to use subject-specific terminology. If you cannot describe it in the vocabulary of the subject, it will not show what you know. Criteria 3, 4 and 5 all point the same way: a bigger, more designed production usually gives you more to work with than a stripped-back one, however good the stripped-back one was.

Match each criterion to what it means for you

Your 500 words, and what they are for

The notes are pre-prepared, attached to the official Appendix 2 form, and capped at 500 words. They are not a second chance to write the essay: they are the material you cannot risk forgetting.

Your draft is too long

You have drafted your notes and the word count comes to 610. The allowance is up to 500 words. How many words do you need to cut?

Which line goes first?

Here are four lines from that over-long draft, written for this module about the invented production "The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter". Tap the ONE that should be cut first, because it will earn nothing in either question.

• Act 1: the daughter arrives at the lighthouse, argues with her father, and decides to stay until the storm passes.
• Performer playing the father: kept his back to her for the whole of the first argument, turned only on the final line.
• Lighting: cold white from a single high source during the storm, warm side-light in the final scene.
• Audience impact: the sudden silence when the foghorn stopped made the auditorium go completely still.

What shape are the questions?

What can you safely expect from this section, and what can you not?

• Two questions: a shorter one asking you to analyse and a longer one asking you to evaluate, though the exact marks and focus can vary
• Exactly 6 marks for analysis and exactly 9 for evaluation, every year without fail
• One question, chosen from a list of options
• Two questions asking essentially the same thing, so one prepared answer covers both

Get the order right

Put the preparation in the order that actually works. Two of these have to happen before you buy a ticket.

• Check a possible production against the five criteria, before booking
• See the production, and write rough notes the same evening while it is fresh
• Pick out the specific moments you remember precisely enough to write about
• Draft the notes across performers, design, concept, impact and use of space
• Cut the draft down to the 500-word limit, losing plot summary first
• Attach the finished notes to the official Appendix 2 form

Say it back

The production you write about must not be a Component 3 _____ text, and must not be _____ in its entirety. You may take in up to _____ words of pre-prepared notes, attached to the official _____ form. Sketches and diagrams are allowed, but programmes and _____ are not.

Three decisions

Three moments in the months before the exam, when the decision is entirely yours.

• Your class has tickets for a production of a play that turns out to be on the Component 3 set-text list. You realise a month before the exam. What now?
• Your notes are at 500 words exactly, but you have not mentioned the lighting at all. Something has to go. What?
• You want to record the shape of the set, and describing it in words is eating your allowance. What are you allowed to do?

Plan your 500 words

Plan the 500 words you would take in, for the production YOU have seen. This is a plan of what goes in the notes, not the notes themselves.

• Name the production and check it against all five selection criteria
• List the specific performer moments you remember precisely enough to write about
• List the design elements you would record, across costume, set, sound and lighting
• Say what you would note about the director's concept, audience impact and use of space
• Say what you will deliberately leave out, and why plot summary is first on that list