3 questions about IB Theater that you’d want to know the answers to
What do we think of when we think about theatre? Is it a school play that you participated in as a child, a Broadway musical, or a Shakespearean performance in the park?
Theatre, as a comprehensive stage art, is presented in various forms and styles. The audience, purpose, style and space design of each play are different. So here comes the question: How do we define “theater”?
A very accomplished Chinese actor and director once said：
“Theatre is a crack in the high wall. Although it looks inconspicuous, you can see light through it. We hope that drama can reflect and return the losses of life, regrets, and frustration back to everyone who experienced them.”
Sounds abstract, right? Is it possible to define theater in plain and easy-to-understand language? A passage written by the famous British theater director Peter Brook in the opening chapter of “Empty Space” might help.
“I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.”
To summarize, drama defines the relationship between the actors, the audience and the space of a stage. In other words, as long as there’s an intricate relationship between these three components, then drama will exist.
You might be curious: If drama is so abstract, how can the IBDP curriculum design a standardized course? The answer is, in fact, very simple: In the IB theater course, IB will ask students to explore and research from all three aspects — — actors, audiences and stage space.
Let us now take a look at IB theater and answer some common questions.
1. How does IB standardize theatre education?
IB theater belongs to the sixth category in the IB course curriculum: The Arts. Other subjects in this category include — — Dance, Music, Film, and Visual Arts.
In fact, IB theater, like other IB courses, has internal and external evaluations. Let’s take a brief look.
Collaborative Project
As the only internal evaluation project in the IB theater subject (the other three are all external evaluations), collaborative creation is a test of students’ teamwork capabilities. This project requires students to form a group with others, start a collaborative project based on a specific topic, and publicly present the finished project to a designated audience!
Research Presentation
Students need to investigate and study the theater traditions and cultures of at least one international region. Afterwards, they will present the research results of the traditional techniques of drama/theater of that region.
Director’s Notebook
Students need to investigate and study at least one publicly published theatrical work, and use their personal viewing experience as the basis for appreciating and conceiving the design and creation of the drama work.
Students who choose Higher Level also need to complete an additional assessment content called Solo Theatre Piece. They need to investigate and study at least one genre of theatre theory, rehearse and show a four to eight-minute solo performance based on a specific argument in the genre they studied.
2. Is IB only for students who are interested in acting?
Although the IB course has only four assessments, it covers a wide range of areas and fields. For example, the director’s notebook requires students to conceive and create mainly from the perspective of the director, but at the same time examining students’ thoughts on choreography, lighting, costumes, makeup and stage props. Collective creation requires students to perform and write the text of the work. For students who are interested in performance or drama theory, Research Presentation and Solo Theatre Piece will test whether you can put theoretical knowledge into practice and apply it to your performances, which is quite a fun challenge.
3. If I do not plan to pursue a career in theater, can the IB theater course still benefit me?
Absolutely! Actually, the original objective of IB theater course design is not only for students who wish to have a career in theater or performing arts, but focused more on developing and expanding the students’ capabilities of creativity and critical thinking. Regardless of whether you will join the theater industry in the future or not, these experiences will definitely help your academic and career development in the long term.
Theater, as a comprehensive art, will also help you build your skills to effectively apply the knowledge acquired inside the classroom in other fields. And this creative process must involve teamwork, so it will test your ability to collaborate with other people.
In addition, similar to other IB courses, writing is a top priority of IB theater. Although you do not need to write a thesis, you are required to write a report for almost every evaluation project, recording the whole process from brainstorming, forming a group to rehearsal and performances.
Doesn’t it sound interesting? This IB course might be different from all the other IB courses you know. It gives students an open space for imagination and creativity. If you are interested in the course or theater itself, stay tuned. We will introduce several amazing books on theatrical art in another blog post!
