Choosing and combining two practitioners for Practitioners in Practice: selecting two complementary or contrasting practitioners or companies, applying their methods to research and devising, and combining influences into a coherent style.

What this dot point is asking

For Practitioners in Practice, OCR requires you to study at least two practitioners or companies and let their methods influence an original devised piece. This dot point is about the choice and the combination: selecting two practitioners whose ideas suit your stimulus, applying their methods to research and devising, and fusing the influences into one coherent style rather than two separate halves. The skill is justification and integration: why these two, and how they work together. This work chiefly earns AO1 (creating and developing ideas, connecting theory and practice) and AO4 (evaluating the work).

The answer

The two practitioners are not a label on your piece; they are the working method behind it. The examiner wants to see that you chose them for good reasons and that their influence genuinely shaped the devising and shows in the result. The decisive qualities are justification and integration.

Choosing two practitioners

Choose practitioners whose ideas and style suit your stimulus and intended effect. Ask what you want the audience to experience, then pick the methods that deliver it.

• For a social or political argument, Brecht's epic theatre brings episodic structure, gestus and the alienation effect.
• For emotional relationships told physically, Frantic Assembly or Complicite bring choreographed sequences, lifts and transformation.
• For a visceral, sensory experience, Artaud brings sensory assault and the broken barrier.
• For truthful, intimate realism, Stanislavski brings objectives and given circumstances.
• For an essential, stripped-back encounter, Brook and Grotowski bring the empty space and the actor-audience relationship.

The two can be complementary (working in the same direction) or contrasting (set in productive tension), but both choices need a reason.

Combining the influences

The common failure is to stage two practitioners in separate blocks (a "Brecht section" then a "Frantic Assembly section"). Strong work fuses them so the piece has one identity. Let each practitioner shape different dimensions of the same moment: Brechtian structure and direct address framing a scene whose relationships are built through choreographed physicality, for example. The audience should feel one coherent style, with both influences visible throughout.

Examples in context

For a devised piece on the human cost of a factory closure, a company might pair Brecht and Frantic Assembly. Brecht shapes the structure and argument: episodic scenes introduced by projected captions, direct address to indict the decision, and a gestus of a worker's hand repeatedly reaching for a clocking-in machine that is no longer there. Frantic Assembly shapes the relationships: choreographed sequences in which families lift and support each other, a physical motif that frays as the pressure mounts. The two influences run through the same scenes, so the piece is at once a social argument and an emotional, physical experience, one coherent style. That fusion, justified by the stimulus, is what the top band rewards.

Try this

Q1. What two qualities do examiners reward when you combine two practitioners? [2 marks]

• Cue. Justification (why the two suit your stimulus and intended effect) and integration (the influences fused into one coherent style, not staged in separate halves).

Q2. Give an example of two practitioners that might suit a socially argued, physically told piece, and what each contributes. [3 marks]

• Cue. Brecht (episodic structure, gestus, direct address, alienation for the social argument) and Frantic Assembly (choreographed physical sequences and lifts for the relationships).

Q3. Explain how you would combine the influence of two practitioners to shape a devised piece, and why your choice suits your stimulus. [10 marks]

• What the marker wants. A named stimulus and intended effect, two justified practitioner choices, each influence assigned to dimensions of the same piece, the influences fused into one coherent style visible throughout, and reflection on why the combination serves the stimulus and audience.

A note on application

This guide is AI-written and not individually human-reviewed. The choice of practitioners must come from OCR's current list and suit your stimulus; always justify the pairing and integrate the influences, because examiners reward a coherent, evidenced practitioner influence over two methods staged in isolation.