Drama
Drama is a very popular subject and engages many different learning styles. It is an excellent subject in which girls learn how to create characters from scratch, play the part of historical characters, and literally allows them to step into the shoes of someone else.
At AESG, the girls study a wide variety of Genres spanning through Jacobean, modernism to Post modernism and contemporary play text. The girls are encouraged to use other styles of Drama, such as Physical Theatre, which allows them to be more creative.
Our girls achieve excellent examination results at both GCSE and A Level.
100% of girls achieved grades A*-B for GCSE Drama (2010), with 87% of girls achieving an A*or A grade.
100% of girls achieved A*-D in A Level Drama and Theatre Studies (2010)
A number of our students have chosen to continue their study of Drama at universities, even venturing out to the USA to study Musical Theatre on Broadway, and we have no doubt that Alderley Edge School for Girls has produced some of the stars of the future.
In Year 7 the girls learn and develop a set of skills and techniques which can be applied to an original piece of Drama. They learn to understand terminology such as Hot-seating, Thought Tracking and Freeze frames which in turn adds more depth and structure to performances.
Our Year 8 syllabus allows the pupils to add to their skills further introducing them to techniques such as Role on the wall, Sound scaping and tension building exercises. It is also in Year 8 that the pupils are introduced to the written elements of Drama i.e. how to write about their practical work, analyse and evaluate in the run up to a formal assessment.
The focus of study in year 9 is also skills based but study topics become more challenging and thought provoking e.g. The Suffragettes. They are also introduced to techniques such as Physical Theatre, Monologues/Duologues as well as working with Play scripts. In Year 9 they also complete a written examination which allows them to explain in detail how their assessed practical work developed during the process period.
Fascinating FactsFascinating Facts
Shakespeare Facts:
- Evidence indicates that William Shakespeare was born on 23 April, the same date he died 52 years later.
- In his will, Shakespeare left his wife his "second-best" bed.
- Shakespeare's name may have meant "Shaker of Spears", indicating warrior ancestry.
- In Elizabethan times, men and boys played all the parts in Shakespeare's plays.
Other Facts
- Musical Theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humour, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole.
- The two masks associated with drama represent the traditional generic division between comedy and tragedy. They are symbols of the ancient Greek Muses, Thalia and Melpomene. Thalia was the Muse of comedy (the laughing face), while Melpomene was the Muse of tragedy (the weeping face).
- There are over 100 theatres in London alone