Working from a stimulus: interrogating the OCR-released stimulus, researching around it, finding a clear intention and target audience, and choosing a style or practitioner influence to shape the devised piece (AO1).

What this dot point is asking

OCR releases a stimulus each year for Component 01/02, and the whole devised piece grows from it. This dot point is about the opening work: how to interrogate the stimulus, research around it, and turn vague reactions into a clear intention and a sense of who the piece is for. Get this stage right and the rest of devising has direction; rush it and the piece tends to wander. The portfolio rewards showing this stage as deliberate creative work, so it is worth understanding in its own right.

Interrogating the stimulus

The first instinct is usually to leap to a story. Resist it. Spend time asking open questions of the stimulus: a single image of an empty chair might suggest absence, waiting, loss, a person who has left, a place held for someone. Brainstorming these associations on paper and on your feet opens a wide creative space, and the portfolio can show this divergent thinking as the start of a deliberate process. The richer the interrogation, the more there is to select from later.

Researching around it

Research is what turns a vague reaction into something specific and credible. If the stimulus is a theme such as "memory", factual research might find a real account of how memory fails, which grounds a character; theatrical research might find that an episodic, non-linear structure suits the way memory works, which shapes the form. The portfolio rewards research that visibly feeds a creative decision, so always record not just what you found but what it changed about the piece. Research that sits in the portfolio but never affects the work earns little.

Finding an intention and audience

The point of interrogating and researching is to arrive at a clear intention: the effect you want the piece to have on its audience, and the idea you want to communicate. A piece "about memory" is not an intention; "to make an audience feel how disorienting it is when a parent forgets you" is. Deciding the target audience sharpens this further, because a piece for a primary-age audience and a piece for adults make different choices about content, length and tone. Agreeing the intention and audience early is what keeps every later decision, material, structure, style, pointed at one purpose, and it gives the portfolio a clear yardstick to evaluate the piece against.

Examples in context

Given the stimulus of a single photograph of a crowded train platform, a group might interrogate it for ideas of departure, separation, the strangers in a crowd, the one person not moving. Factual research into a real evacuation grounds the situation; theatrical research into still image and physical theatre suggests a way to stage a crowd with five actors. From this they agree an intention: to make the audience feel the loneliness of being left behind in a moving crowd, for an audience of their peers. That intention then guides every later choice, and the portfolio shows the line from photograph to research to intention.

Try this

Q1. What does it mean to interrogate a stimulus? [2 marks]

• Cue. To ask what it suggests, what associations and questions it raises, and what a piece about it might explore, before deciding on a story.

Q2. Give one example of factual research and one example of theatrical research for a stimulus. [2 marks]

• Cue. Factual: the real history or issue behind the stimulus. Theatrical: a style, genre or practitioner whose methods could shape the piece.

Q3. Explain how you responded to your stimulus and used research to develop ideas for your devised piece. [8 marks]

• What the marker wants. A clear line from interrogating the stimulus, through research, to a focused intention, with research visibly feeding creative decisions, not a description of the stimulus.