Scripted: Pyramus and Thisbe
Summary of task
Students were engaged in a unit of work on Elizabethan drama using Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as the key text for a performance-based assessment. They studied style and the acting conventions of the play’s original context. They also learned about performing to style using:
- soliloquy and aside
- an opposite gender role
- presentational acting
- costume-based stagecraft.
Students were assessed on their choice of a section of the script that they developed to represent their understanding of style and convention. This was at the end of a 10-week unit that included the ‘moved reading’ of the entire play. The performances were finally presented to a community audience in an outdoor setting.
