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.

What this dot point is asking

AQA wants you to know who contributes to a theatre production and what each role does, so that in Section B you can write convincingly as a performer, director and designer, and in Section C you can analyse the choices of theatre makers in a live production. The roles also frame the practitioner work of Component 2.

The core theatre-making roles

Each role brings a distinct set of skills, but all serve the production's interpretation.

• Playwright. Writes the script: structure, dialogue, characters, stage directions and the implied world of the play. The text is fixed; what a production makes of it is not.
• Director. Forms the overall concept or interpretation, decides period, style and meaning, blocks the action (where actors move and stand), sets pace and rhythm, and guides actors and designers towards a unified vision.
• Performer (actor). Uses vocal skills (pitch, pace, pause, tone, volume, accent, emphasis) and physical skills (posture, gesture, movement, facial expression, eye contact, proxemics) to communicate character, status and intention.
• Set designer. Creates the physical environment: location, period, levels and the geometry the actors work in.
• Lighting designer. Controls visibility, mood, focus and time using colour, angle, intensity and transitions.
• Sound designer. Provides effects, music, underscoring and atmosphere, diegetic and non-diegetic.
• Costume designer. Signals character, period, status and change through fabric, cut, colour and condition.

How the roles combine

The director is the link that holds the production together. A directorial concept (for example, setting a Greek tragedy in a modern dictatorship) sets the brief for every designer and informs how actors play their roles. Designers then translate that concept into concrete choices, and performers embody it moment by moment, so a coherent production reads as one idea expressed through many hands.

Vocal and physical skills in detail

When you write as a performer, be precise. Vocal skills include pitch (high or low), pace (fast for panic, slow for control), pause (for tension or thought), tone (warm, cold, sarcastic), volume and accent. Physical skills include posture (slumped or lifted), gesture, gait, facial expression, eye contact or its avoidance, and proxemics, the meaningful distance between characters. A character who keeps their distance and avoids eye contact reads very differently from one who closes the space and holds a gaze.

Writing as a theatre maker in the exam

In Section B you adopt three perspectives. As a performer you describe specific vocal and physical choices for a moment and the intention behind each. As a director you justify a concept and how you would guide the actors and use the space. As a designer you describe a specific set, lighting, sound or costume choice and its effect on the audience. The strongest answers keep all three pulling toward one interpretation.