Playmaking Techniques
The following playmaking techniques MUST be used in order to devise drama in response to stimulus material presented to you. Each of the following techniques should be used in the creative process. They are not in any particular order and in fact should be revisited many times.
Researching
Collect material such as poems, cartoons, song lyrics, pictures, and images, facts and opinions, questions and comments relevant to the stimulus material and the topic you are exploring in your performance work.
Consider the dramatic potential evident in the material you have discovered in your research.
Brainstorming
Brainstorming initial ideas in response to stimulus. This may be done verbally and/or visually on butchers paper. Place the research findings in a random order in a virtual or paper journal or on a sheet of paper and experiment with ideas suggested by the material. Diagrammatically or visually, represent the ideas that develop through use of charts or in a cartoon format.
Use visualisation techniques to imagine characters that might be part of the drama, a dramatic moment or an aspect of a scene.
Improvising
Use techniques such as:
Scripting
Documenting ideas, dramatic moments, scenes as a record of what has been accomplished. The script should include the key ideas being explored and the intended shape of the drama, for example on cards or in digital form.
Editing
Reviewing material developed through improvisation and scripting and ordering or developing to build the dramatic form. When you are editing, you are shaping the narrative, considering and manipulating a performance style or convention, experimenting with the transition from one scene to another. You are also considering the varied ways in which characters, places and objects can be transformed, for example to condense ideas to intensify the narrative through action rather than dialogue.
Rehearsing
Blocking and running the work, trialling ways of applying expressive and performance skills to present the ideas in the drama with conviction, using props and/or set, establishing an actor–audience relationship, communicating meaning, building confidence as a performer.
Refining
Seeking and implementing feedback, ensuring performance meets requirements such as time-limit or use of transformations, dramatic elements, performance styles or conventions; deepening communication of ideas by exaggerating aspects of the performance, for example using heightened language, symbols, gesture or movement
Researching
Collect material such as poems, cartoons, song lyrics, pictures, and images, facts and opinions, questions and comments relevant to the stimulus material and the topic you are exploring in your performance work.
Consider the dramatic potential evident in the material you have discovered in your research.
Brainstorming
Brainstorming initial ideas in response to stimulus. This may be done verbally and/or visually on butchers paper. Place the research findings in a random order in a virtual or paper journal or on a sheet of paper and experiment with ideas suggested by the material. Diagrammatically or visually, represent the ideas that develop through use of charts or in a cartoon format.
Use visualisation techniques to imagine characters that might be part of the drama, a dramatic moment or an aspect of a scene.
Improvising
Use techniques such as:
- role-play to explore possible threads in the story or narrative.
- trialling different ways of presenting a scene such as using only words, only mime or gesture, symbolically or just using sounds and movement.
- experimenting with different ways of ordering the material to create meaning.
- experimenting with different performance styles and ways of using and manipulating dramatic elements or conventions.
- personification, for example, physicalising objects or locations to create transformations.
- hot-seating to explore aspects of a character.
Scripting
Documenting ideas, dramatic moments, scenes as a record of what has been accomplished. The script should include the key ideas being explored and the intended shape of the drama, for example on cards or in digital form.
Editing
Reviewing material developed through improvisation and scripting and ordering or developing to build the dramatic form. When you are editing, you are shaping the narrative, considering and manipulating a performance style or convention, experimenting with the transition from one scene to another. You are also considering the varied ways in which characters, places and objects can be transformed, for example to condense ideas to intensify the narrative through action rather than dialogue.
Rehearsing
Blocking and running the work, trialling ways of applying expressive and performance skills to present the ideas in the drama with conviction, using props and/or set, establishing an actor–audience relationship, communicating meaning, building confidence as a performer.
Refining
Seeking and implementing feedback, ensuring performance meets requirements such as time-limit or use of transformations, dramatic elements, performance styles or conventions; deepening communication of ideas by exaggerating aspects of the performance, for example using heightened language, symbols, gesture or movement