Drama syllabus, dot point by dot point

The design elements of set, lighting, sound and costume, including their vocabulary and conventions, and how each designer's choices create location, mood, character and meaning for an audience.

Genre and theatrical style, including tragedy, comedy, naturalism, non-naturalism, epic and physical theatre, and how a play's genre and style guide the choices of performers, directors and designers.

The roles and skills of theatre makers, including the playwright, director, performer, and set, lighting, sound and costume designers, and how their work combines to create meaning for an audience.

Staging configurations and theatrical conventions, including proscenium arch, thrust, traverse, in the round and promenade staging, and how each affects sightlines, entrances, proxemics and the actor-audience relationship.

Analysing live performance, including keeping detailed records of a production seen, describing precise moments of acting and design, and using accurate theatrical vocabulary to explain how meaning was created.

Evaluating actor and design choices in a live production, including judging how successfully performers and designers created meaning and effect, and supporting each judgement with specific evidence and theatrical reasoning.

Writing the live theatre response, including answering the set question, structuring a focused argument, embedding precise evidence, and balancing analysis and evaluation under timed closed-book conditions.

Component 2 Creating Original Drama, including devising an original piece influenced by one prescribed practitioner, specialising as performer, designer or director, the working notebook and devised performance, and how the marks and assessment objectives are distributed.

Component 3 Making Theatre, including the practical exploration of three extracts from three different plays, applying a prescribed practitioner's methodology to the assessed extract, the choice of specialism, the reflective report, and how the marks and assessment objectives are distributed.

Analysing a set play, including plot and structure, character and relationships, themes and ideas, language and dramatic devices, and how these combine to create meaning for an audience.

Justifying directorial and design choices for a set play, including a coherent directorial concept and specific set, lighting, sound and costume decisions, and explaining their intended effect on a contemporary audience.

Interpreting a text for performance, including reading the play from the perspectives of performer, director and designer, and justifying choices about how a moment could be realised for a contemporary audience.

The social, cultural and historical context of a set play, including when and why it was written, its original conditions of performance, and how context informs both analysis and staging for a contemporary audience.

Artaud and the Theatre of Cruelty, including total theatre, the assault on the senses, breaking the actor-audience barrier, ritual, sound, light and movement, and the aim of provoking a primal, subconscious response.

Steven Berkoff and total theatre, including stylised mime, exaggerated physicality and vocal delivery, the ensemble creating set and sound with their bodies, heightened language and direct address, and grotesque, satirical characterisation.

Brecht and epic theatre, including the alienation effect, gestus, episodic structure, direct address, placards and song, and how these devices encourage an audience to think critically rather than become emotionally absorbed.

Complicite and collaborative, devised theatre, including ensemble physicality rooted in Lecoq, imaginative transformation of objects and space, integrated multimedia and design, non-linear storytelling, and director Simon McBurney's process.

DV8 Physical Theatre and Lloyd Newson, including the fusion of dance and theatre, verbatim and documentary text set to movement, the exploration of social and political issues, risk-taking choreography, and the use of film.

Frantic Assembly and physical theatre, including ensemble physicality, building blocks and devising methods, choreographed movement and lifts, the integration of design and music, and storytelling led by the body.

Katie Mitchell as director, including a rigorous research-led process, a Stanislavskian focus on the actor's inner life and given circumstances, precise design and sound, and the live cinema technique of filming a performance on stage.

Kneehigh Theatre and popular storytelling, including the adaptation of myth and folk tale, live music and song, puppetry and visual invention, a rough, playful aesthetic, and site-responsive ensemble performance.

Jacques Lecoq and the pedagogy of movement, including the neutral mask, mime and gesture, the seven levels of tension, play and complicite, the via negativa of stripping back, and ensemble physical storytelling.

Joan Littlewood and Theatre Workshop, including collaborative improvisation and devising, the trained ensemble, popular and political theatre, the influence of Brecht and Stanislavski, and the documentary musical Oh What a Lovely War.

Punchdrunk and immersive theatre, including site-specific staging in transformed buildings, the masked, free-roaming audience, detailed sensory design and discoverable narrative, one-on-one encounters, and movement-led, largely wordless performance.

Stanislavski and naturalism, including the system of psychological realism, given circumstances, the magic if, objectives and units, emotion memory, and how the approach produces truthful, believable performance.