The set text study overview: Component 3 Section A for Edexcel GCSE Drama

This overview maps the Edexcel GCSE Drama set-text study, examined as Section A of the Component 3 written exam. You study one complete performance text and answer a single question, broken into parts, on an unseen printed extract from it. The section is worth 45 marks and tests AO3: knowledge and understanding of how drama is developed and performed.

What Section A tests

Section A is practical, not literary. It prints an extract from your set text and asks how you would bring it to life as a performer, a director and a designer. So your study has to make the whole play familiar enough that any extract feels like home ground, and full of performance and design decisions rather than theme essays.

The four pages of this module

1. Studying the set text for the exam. How to study one complete text practically: plot, structure, characters, key moments, staging, genre and context, ready to make choices on any extract.
2. Playing a role: the performer parts. Answering the short performer parts with named physical and vocal choices, each with a reason, matching the number of suggestions to the tariff.
3. Directing the extract: the director parts. Developing directorial choices about production elements and the performers, with effects and context, on the higher-tariff parts.
4. Designing for the extract: the designer part. The highest-tariff part: a developed, coherent design in one element (costume, sound, staging, lighting or set), with an effect for every choice.

Think like a theatre maker

The thread through all four pages is to study and answer as a theatre maker. For every important moment of the play, ask the three exam questions in advance: how would I perform this role, how would I direct this moment, and how would I design this extract? Building these decisions during your study turns the exam into recall and adaptation rather than invention under pressure.

The prescribed texts

You study one complete text from List A (pre-1954) or List B (post-2000). The texts are chosen to be engaging and stageable, from An Inspector Calls and The Crucible to DNA and 1984. Your centre chooses the text and the corresponding paper (3A for List A, 3B for List B). Whichever text you study, the skills are the same: know it deeply, and be ready to perform, direct and design any part of it.

How to prepare

Read the play as a director and designer would, deciding how you would stage its moments. Learn the structure and key moments so any extract is familiar. Build contextual knowledge alongside the staging choices, since AO3 rewards context that shapes a decision. Practise the performer, director and designer parts on past extracts, matching your answer's depth to each part's tariff.

Where this fits

This module draws on the skills module (physical, vocal and spatial choices), the design module (the four design disciplines), the practitioners module (stylistic readings of the extract) and the exam-technique module (structuring and timing the response, and using context). Browse the full set at /gcse-edexcel/drama/syllabus.