writing drama essays (1 Viewer)

[jazzmuzik]

Our class as a whole is shite at writing drama essays.
We have a practice one today on "Summer of the bloody seventeenth doll"

the question is...

"In the Doll Lawler presents an insight into the Australian experience at a specific point in the social and cultural landscape in order to explore issues that are universally Australian"

Discuss

So i have notes on...
* The social/cultural context of the play withing Australian theatre history and also the context/setting of the play.
* Then have notes on allll the bazillion themes that are apparently explored
* And then i have some of the dramatic conventions, (including dialogue, costume, set et etc)

My question is how is the best way to structure Drama responses so you can cover everything ( but still break it up into 3 Body paragraphs that dont sound like 1) the context and setting is... 2) the themes are...3) some dramatic conventions used are...)

 

[^CoSMic DoRiS^^]

ok well currently i am half asleep and slightly hungover as i write this so i apologise if it makes no sense, but i'll give it a shot.

Treat your essay the same as you would an English one, structure-wise. You wouldn't treat themes, context and techniques separately in English, and it doesn't work in Drama either; you need to link it all together. I found a good way to do it was to pick a thematic concern, and talk about it in relation to the context and techniques used. For example (forgive me, i haven't thought about this play in months):

"The inevitability of change, as a core theme explored in Lawler's play, reflects the social and cultural landscape of 1950's Australia through the characters, particuarly Olive, who act as metaphors for the different aspects of Australian society and this point in time, and also help to express the deeper, more universal significance of this idea to the notion of Australian identity.
[now you explain how the characters do this, eg, Olive could be said to represent an Australian society clinging to an outdated ideal of identity and culture, and you could use her costuming (technique!) to illustrate the point. Do that for a few other key characters like Pearl, Bubba and the boys, making sure to include quotes and keep linking the characters back to what they say about the context of the play]
Then you might get a little further into the techniques to end off the paragraph, like "The set and lighting used during the play serves to highlight Lawler's ideas about this theme of change and its effects on Australian society and culture"; [find some examples of this eg the furniture in the room that spans several decades, showing how the world outside has continued to change while the characters (and by implication, Australia) have remained stuck in their own fantasy, a fact reinforced by the vines that shield their little paradise from the outside, etc etc].

Doing something like that allows you to link together themes and context and techniques without doing it separately; you could start the next paragraph by saying that the set is also integral to exploring themes about the reassessment of dreams and reality, thus your paragraphs are linked as well, and in this new paragraph you would do the same thing, explore the theme and relate it to how Lawler uses dramatic techniques (costume, lighting, the structure of the play itself, etc etc) and also how the theme reflects the social and cultural landscape of the 1950s and how it could be applied in a more universal sense. quotes are good to help make the links, eg i think in one of my essays last year i wrote something like
'Pearl, as a metaphor for the changing face of Australian society, caught between the old and the new, wakes up the others to the fact that "You n Barney n Olive, you're too old for it anymore" and by implication, extends this sentiment to Australian society and culture during the 1950's, exploring Lawler's concerns about where the country was heading and of course the universal idea that change is an inevitable driving force behind progress in any society'
- something like that, anyway. i dont remember.

anyway hope my tired ramblings didn't confuse you too much. good luck

 

[jazzmuzik]

Thanks that all makes perfect sense and helps a lot