Verbatim Theatre Essay-NEED HELP URGENTLY

[asukkar]

'Verbatim is storytelling at its best. What are the benefits of such storytelling as a collective act?' she wants us to reference the two plays we have 'studied' Beyond the neck and Parramatta Girls, but I have no idea how to structure this response, I don't even know much about verbatim either!! (she only spoke about it for one lesson).
Help would be much appreciated!! 

 

[sudodds]

Unfortunately I have an incompetent Drama teacher who throws pre written essays from online at us without telling us how to structure a drama essay properly, now I am struggling as she has given our class a question for our exam 'Verbatim is storytelling at its best. What are the benefits of such storytelling as a collective act?' she wants us to reference the two plays we have 'studied' Beyond the neck and Parramatta Girls, but I have no idea how to structure this response, I don't even know much about verbatim either!! (she only spoke about it for one lesson).
Help would be much appreciated!! 

Hey Asukkar!

Unfortunately I didn't study Verbatim theatre last year (multidiscipline ftw) but I can give you a bit of direction in regards to structure!

Drama essays are completely unlike any other essay you will get given in the HSC, because they are basically a mixture of creative writing and analysis. Of course, like any essay you need to answer the question, but in doing so you also need to put the marker in the "space." The way you do this is vividly and evocatively describe your performances (I'm basing this of the assumption that you have done at least workshopped scenes from the plays that you are studying - If you haven't performed them yet then you'll have to provide an imagined response, how would you stage the scene if you were the director?).

This was how we were taught to structure drama essays:

Introduction
- Within your intro you'll need to explain the concept of verbatim theatre in relation to the question.

Para 1: Context for Play 1
- briefly outline the context of the play, who wrote it, why did they write, what is it about. Really draw out the themes, issues and concerns that they play is dealing with.

Para 2: Your Performance of Play 1
- How did you perform a scene/section of play 1? What verbatim techniques did you use and why were they critical to the message/dramatic meaning?

Para 3: Context for Play 2

Para 4: Your Performance of Play 2

Conclusion

As I said I didn't study verbatim theatre, so I don't know if there are any kind of "verbatim essay" intricacies that need to be included. For example with the multidiscipline theatre unit, a big component of that was workshopping, and the process of creating rather than the final performance, so my 4th paragraph wasn't so much on my performance of play 2 (we only had one play to study), but rather our devising process when creating our own piece of multidiscipline theatre. So yeah, I don't know if verbatim theatre has an equivelent concern, but if it does then it'll probably be pretty obvious to you/your teacher will have told you.

I hope this helps! I've attached my essays on multidiscipline theatre and Australian theatre for reference if you're confused with what I wrote above (they're both WAY longer than you'd have to write in the exam btw, these were both me just practicing how much I knew - but the structure is still the same)