Skills Developed Through Drama
What skills can I develop in tutorials?
Although Drama at ACU is not a course dedicated exclusively to professional training, through practical activities in tutorials you will learn how to identify and practice a range of techniques and skills that you can use to create a performance. Since different techniques can be useful for different reasons and occasions, it is best if you consider these skills as tools in a toolbox and colours on a palette as you are constructing something that requires a lot of hard work but also creating a work of art. Some of these skills include:
- How to prepare for rehearsals and use rehearsal time effectively
- How to use and devise effective improvisations
- How to prepare your body, emotions and mind for different types of performance
- How to identify and effectively use Presentational or Representational acting styles such as Naturalism, Nō, Commedia Dell’Arte, Melodrama, Pantomime
- How to identify and effectively use visual elements of production such as lighting, set and costume design
- How to identify and effectively use aural elements of production such as exploring the relationship between music, sound design and vocal effects
- How to produce different vocal effects using style, accent, pitch, volume and breath control
- How to identify and accentuate or highlight comic, tragic and serious dramatic styles of writing and performance
- How to connect events and interests offered in historical literature to contemporary events and interests
- How to identify different types of literary structures and poetic languages
Further reading:
Practical applications of theory
Appia, Adolphe. Adolphe Appia: Texts on Theatre. New York; London: Routledge, 1993.
Boal, Augusto. Games for Actors and Non-Actors. Trans. Adrian Jackson. London: Routledge, 1992.
Craig, Edward Gordon. The Theatre Advancing. New York: Benjamin Bloom, 1947.
Huxley, Michael, and Noel Witts, eds. The Twentieth Century Performance Reader. London: Routledge.
Stanislavski, Konstantin. An Actor Prepares. New York: Theatre Arts, 1936.
Suzuki, Tadashi. The Way of Acting. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1986.
Zarrilli, Phillip, ed. Acting (Re) Considered. New York; London: Routledge, 1995.
