Drama Year 8 Topics

During year 8 pupils have the chance to explore three topics Melodrama/Commedia Dell’Arte, Shakespeare, and Storytelling theatre, giving them a firm background in theatre styles throughout history. Pupils build on performance skills learnt in year 7 and work to improve their confidence when performing for the class.

Term 1: Commedia Dell Arte & Melodrama
Melodrama is a lively topic where we explore a variety of fun characters such as, villains, heroes, heroines, aged parents, and comic servants. Lessons typically begin with fun warm up games that get us ready for exaggerated movements, and then progress to look at effective characterisation, use of voice, body language and movement, to create effective comic characters. Melodrama explores the extremes of the evil and the good, the weak and the strong, the young and the old. Commedia Dell’Arte has similar qualities to Melodrama but we look more at the comical side of the performance and how to make our audience Laugh. We use a lot of mime work to create comical performances… a bit like Mr Bean, or the Chuckle Brothers!

Term two: Shakespeare
During Shakespeare work we explore at least two plays - there storyline and plot, without even reading the scripts! Students take a crash course in plot, theme, setting and character relationships, exploring many of the magical worlds that Shakespeare created and playing with the colourful language. A favourite lesson for many students is the exploration of Shakespearian insults – ‘You vile blistered tongued baggage!’ – using a combination of Shakespearian words and modern day language, to get to grips with the meaning behind some of Shakespeare’s most vivid language. Working in conjunction with the English department, students will always cover an outline of the play that they will go on to study in their year 9 English SAT’s, giving them a basic outline of what to expect in year 9, and it is through this unit in drama that students learn how to be creative with drama – using physical theatre, sound effects and essence machines to bring to life the world of two of Shakespeare’s plays.

Term three: Story telling theatre.

In the final term, students build on the skills they have learnt throughout the year to explore two mythical children’s stories ‘Beowulf’ and ‘Sweethart Roland’. Using the elements of comedy and exaggeration from term one and the creativity of term two, students build upon these skills to produce performances of these popular stories. For many students this is a first taste of what they may go on to study at GCSE level, where our students in year 10 create modern day versions of famous myths, to perform to local primary schools. This final unit is a chance for students to consolidate new skills they have developed throughout the year and to prepare for the challenges of year 9 – where students take the leap to becoming more independent drama practitioners, facing the challenges of leading a group, directing their own work on a regular basis and performing with skill and confidence.