OCR A-Level Drama and Theatre: the set practitioners and companies, a complete overview

What the practitioners demand

OCR's practitioners and companies are not names to memorise; they are working methods that shape how you devise, rehearse and interpret. For Practitioners in Practice you study at least two and let their influence drive an original devised piece, and their methods recur whenever a written question asks how you would rehearse or stage a moment. This overview ties the practitioners together; each has its own dot-point page with practice questions.

The map: what each practitioner wants from the audience

The fastest way to hold the practitioners is by the audience response each one seeks.

• Stanislavski wants belief and empathy, through truthful, motivated acting.
• Brecht wants critical thought about society, through devices that break empathy.
• Artaud wants to overwhelm the audience below reason, through a sensory assault.
• Frantic Assembly and Complicite want story and emotion told through the body and the ensemble.
• Brook and Grotowski want an essential, intense live encounter, made from almost nothing.

Once you know the aim, the techniques follow.

Stanislavski and psychological realism

Stanislavski's system makes acting truthful and motivated: given circumstances (the facts of the character's world), objectives and units (what the character wants, scene by scene and beat by beat), the magic if (imagining what you would do in the situation), emotion memory, and the through-line that links objectives into one journey. The aim is belief: the audience accepts the character as real. In application, every tool must end in a motivated vocal or physical choice.

Brecht and epic theatre

Brecht wants a thinking audience. The alienation effect (Verfremdung) keeps the audience critical by making the staging visibly constructed; gestus crystallises a social relationship in a physical action; episodic structure, placards, song, direct address, multi-rolling and visible technique all break absorption. Every device must serve a critical thought about society, or it is decoration.

Artaud and the Theatre of Cruelty

Artaud wants to overwhelm. The Theatre of Cruelty assaults the senses with intense light, dissonant sound, movement and image, privileges non-verbal communication, uses ritual and repetition, and breaks the audience-stage barrier so the audience is immersed. "Cruelty" means rigour and intensity, not literal violence: the aim is a total, transformative sensory experience.

Physical and ensemble companies

Frantic Assembly and Complicite make collaborative, movement-led theatre. Choreographed physical sequences and lifts (Building Blocks), ensemble image-making, and transformation of performer and object carry meaning the body, not just the words. A lift shows a relationship; a motif tracks change; the ensemble becomes a place or a crowd. The physicality is precise and devised.

Brook, Grotowski and the poor theatre

Brook's empty space and Grotowski's poor theatre strip theatre to the actor and the audience. Rejecting elaborate design, they concentrate on the trained body and voice, the charged actor-audience relationship, and the audience's imagination. It is a discipline of subtraction: meaning made from almost nothing.

Choosing and combining two practitioners

The devising unit asks you to combine two. Choose them to suit your stimulus and intended effect, then fuse the influences into one coherent style, letting each shape different dimensions of the same moments rather than staging two separate halves. Justify the pairing and make the influence visible throughout.

How practitioner work is assessed

In Practitioners in Practice the practitioner study chiefly serves:

• AO1 - creating and developing ideas, connecting theory (the practitioners' methods) and practice (your devised piece).
• AO2 - applying skills to realise the devised work in performance.
• AO4 - evaluating the influence and the outcome.

In the written papers, practitioner methods support AO2 and AO3 when you justify how you would rehearse or stage a moment in a recognised style.

Check your knowledge

A mix of recall and applied questions on the practitioners. Attempt them, then check against the solutions.

1. Name the audience response each of the five approaches seeks. (5 marks)
2. Name three tools of Stanislavski's system. (3 marks)
3. Define the alienation effect and gestus. (2 marks)
4. What does "cruelty" mean in Artaud's theatre? (2 marks)
5. Name two methods of physical and ensemble companies. (2 marks)
6. What is Brook's empty space? (2 marks)
7. What two qualities do examiners reward when combining two practitioners? (2 marks)
8. Why must a technique end in a choice rather than a definition? (2 marks)