Choosing a performance text and two extracts: selecting a published play different from the set text and devised piece, choosing two contrasting extracts that show range, and exploring the text for performance (AO1, AO2).

What this dot point is asking

Component 03 (Presenting and performing texts) is worth 60 marks and 30% of the GCSE, marked by a visiting OCR examiner. You present two extracts from a single published performance text, as a performer or a designer. This dot point is about the choices that come before rehearsal: picking a text that meets OCR's rules, selecting two extracts that let you show range, and exploring the text so the extracts are grounded in the whole play. Getting these choices right sets up everything the examiner will later assess.

The rules on the text

The first job is choosing a text that meets these rules and suits your group. It should give you two extracts with enough substance to perform and enough contrast to show range, and roles that play to the skills you and your group can demonstrate. A text chosen because it has rich, contrasting scenes for your cast is a stronger starting point than one chosen because it is famous; the examiner assesses the realisation, so the text needs to give you something to realise.

Choosing two contrasting extracts

Range is the principle behind extract choice. Two extracts that are very similar (two quiet, sad two-handers, say) limit what you can show, however well you perform them. Two that contrast (a tense confrontation and a tender reconciliation, or a high-status scene and a vulnerable one) let you demonstrate vocal and physical flexibility and a fuller sense of the character's journey. Choose with the examiner's view in mind: what will these two extracts, together, let me show that one alone could not?

Exploring the text for performance

The extracts are not isolated scenes; they belong to a whole play. Exploring the full text first, its story, characters, relationships, style and context, grounds the extracts so your performance is informed rather than guessed. Knowing where an extract sits in the arc tells you what the character has just been through and where they are heading, which shapes how you play the moment. This exploration also feeds the supporting documentation and the interpretation, so it is not wasted preparation: it is the foundation that makes specific performance and design choices defensible.

Examples in context

A group choosing a published two-act play might select one extract from early on, where two characters meet as wary strangers (low warmth, careful status play), and a second from near the end, where the same two confront a shared loss (high emotion, shifted status). Together the extracts let each performer show a guarded register and an exposed one, and the contrast traces the relationship's change. Because they explored the whole play first, they know what happens between the extracts, so the second scene carries the weight of everything the audience did not see, which informs how they play it.

Try this

Q1. State one OCR rule about the performance text for Component 03. [1 mark]

• Cue. It must be a published play different from the Component 04 set text and from the devised piece (either rule is acceptable).

Q2. Why should the two extracts contrast? [2 marks]

• Cue. Contrast lets you show range, more than one register of vocal and physical skill, which one similar pair of extracts could not.

Q3. Explain why you chose your two extracts from the performance text, and how they show your range. [6 marks]

• What the marker wants. The choice explained in terms of contrast and the skills each extract lets you demonstrate, with specific reference to the extracts, grounded in the whole play, not a plot description.