Exam Thoughts

[cambiej]

Okay so it seems that very few people on here even do theatre - it IS a ridiculous exam anyway.

'Select an appropriate venue for this performance.'

...okay VCAA, whatever you say. 

[saaaaaam]

I sort of chose a stage type and not a 'venue'. Although I'm still not quite sure what that question was asking for!

Although I loved the choice of West Wide Story as the play. Purely because I was familiar with it. On our prac exam the play for question four was Guildenstern and Rosencrantz are Dead which was way too complex to digest in that small amount of time.

Overall, it was a LOT better than I expected it to be. Now I guess I just have to wait and see how I did.

[cambiej]

There was so much more writing than compared to last year's with the design question! I still think theatre is a ridiculous thing to examine written-wise anyway.

[saaaaaam]

I think I preferred the design question this year. I liked the guidance it gave whereas I've felt lost answering it in the past.

[brockjock]

I absolutly loved the Caucasian Chalk Circle question, Brechtian and Epic theatre is so easy to think through and come up with ideas for...

If you strugled with question three or four, realy you deserve to Fail they are the same questions every year and on the Sacs...Although I was so worried I spelt Lisa McCune's name wrong but I didn't.

I hated the West Side Story question... it was so ambigious in what it wanted.... well I found it that way atleast
I chose to hold it at Federation Square I couldn't think of anything else... exept for the Botanic Gardens aka "Australian Shakespeare Company" style.

The stimulus was verry limited I found particularly for design stagecrafts, there was two images and they were fairly basic at that.

The worst question was the last one worth 6 marks and you had to write how your stagecraft would be affected by another in production season with refrence to the stimulus and to your answer in part A.... I did set design and then the way it was afected by the stagecraft of lighting particularly in outdoor theatre... =|

[lorcan_raven]

Ok firstly, that was definitely an anti-climax to what I was expecting. I was anticipating a totally irrelevant hour and a half of random theatrical jargon that over-analysed basic Australian "theatre in education" plays.      I found question 3 on unit 4 text utterly ridiculously simple - if you couldn't get that you're wasting your time in the subject. Question 2 was, for richard III at least, straightforward and more succinct than I was expecting. Caucasian chalk circle was a great choice - real themes and strong style that are perfect to "interpret" as an objective student. And west side story was lucky - considering I know the musical back-to-front - but the way they worked the questions was so convoluted. Choose a performance AREA? :| and using stimulus AND the prior stagecraft AND the style during SEASON? Wow that's bizarre. I thought I would have drawn a lot more but decided to do direction most of the time anyway so not needed in the end.    I felt it was a fair exam, with the odd weirdly WORDED question.

[brockjock]

A Theatre exam is nothing without "Fix It Alice" or "Brown Owl and the Brownies"

Looking back at previous years exams I hate the 2010 Q4 even more now....

Q4 - 2007
"a. Briefl y explain how your work in one area of stagecraft could be infl uenced by aspects of the contextual
background and two or more of the stimulus materials.
Start by naming the area of stagecraft.
5 marks
b. Using the same area of stagecraft as you used in part a., aspects of the contextual background and the
stimulus materials, complete the appropriate task below.

ie:
Set
Drawing on two or more of the stimulus materials and aspects of the contextual background, create a set
design for this production.
Your response must include an explanation of the design concept and annotated illustration(s)."

That ^^^^ was very specpific and clear in what it wanted you to do but this year it was like "describe what task would your stagecraft area do in production development in reference to ect...."

Was there a question that asked for a diagram and annotations?

[Nic K]

I really liked the questions. I dunno how I went....I hope I went well but I found it a really enjoyable exam. Is it wrong to say that the exam for Theatre is kinda.....fun?

[rio]

i ran out of time!!!! but it was pretty good!! i did richard III and the question was basically the same as the 2009 exam!!