In Unit 4 AOS 3, students analyse and evaluate the play-making techniques they used in developing their solo performance. This is distinct from simply listing the techniques — it requires analytical reflection on what each technique contributed to the development of the work, and evaluation of how effectively the techniques served the performance’s intentions.
Not all play-making techniques are equally useful in solo contexts. In ensemble work, techniques like role-play and improvisation can involve multiple performers interacting. In solo work, these must be adapted:
Techniques well-suited to solo development:
- Solo improvisation: free, unscripted exploration of character, situation or theme without an audience or other performers.
- Physical exploration: developing the character’s physical vocabulary through extensive physical improvisation.
- Recorded self-review: recording and watching solo improvisations provides the external perspective that, in ensemble, comes from other performers.
- Hot-seating (self-directed): writing questions and answering them in character; or working with a director/peer who hot-seats the character.
- Monologue and script drafting: writing and rewriting the text of the performance as a form of play-making.
- Physical score development: creating and fixing a physical score for sections of the performance, then developing it through repetition and variation.
- Spatial exploration: experimenting with where actions and transitions occur in the space, and how spatial choices carry meaning.
- Image work: finding specific visual images (tableaux or still positions) that encapsulate the performance’s key themes.
For the Unit 4 AOS 3 analytical task, describe, analyse and evaluate the play-making techniques used:
Describe: What technique was used? When in the process?
Analyse: What did this technique contribute? What did it reveal about the character, the story or the intended meaning? How did it connect to the dramatic potential of the stimulus?
Evaluate: How effective was this technique in developing the performance? Did it generate material that survived into the final performance? If not, why not — and what did the non-surviving material contribute to your understanding?
| Technique | What It Typically Reveals in Solo Development |
|---|---|
| Physical exploration | The body’s authentic responses; habitual movement patterns to break; the character’s physical truth |
| Improvised monologue | The character’s voice; language and rhythm; subtext and contradiction |
| Image/tableau work | The performance’s visual vocabulary; key symbolic images; structural peaks |
| Repetition and variation | What the performance’s recurring motifs should be; how variation accumulates meaning |
| Working with silence | Where silence is most powerful; how the body fills silence |
| Hot-seating | Character backstory, contradiction, and relationship to the performance’s themes |
The most valuable analytical reflection traces the journey from technique to specific performance element:
- “In the third week of development, I used a sustained physical improvisation in which I explored the character’s relationship to gravity — the sensation of being weighted down. This improvisation generated the slumped, forward-falling posture that became the character’s consistent physical archetype, and also suggested the image of the character slowly collapsing to the floor at the performance’s climax.”
KEY TAKEAWAY: The analytical task is not a report of everything you did — it is a reflection on the most significant moments of the development process, those where a play-making technique opened up the performance in an important way. Select the most important and interesting examples and analyse them with depth and specificity.
One of the distinctive challenges of solo play-making is the absence of other performers to respond to, generate material with, and provide an external perspective on the work. Strategies for addressing this absence include:
- Director or mentor: working with a teacher, peer or outside observer who provides external feedback during the devising process.
- Video review: recording and reviewing solo improvisations to gain the perspective that other performers would provide in ensemble work.
- Showing work to peers: regularly showing work-in-progress to small groups of peers and receiving structured, specific feedback.
- Written reflection: using the writing process itself as a form of external perspective — explaining your choices in writing clarifies whether they are actually doing what you think they are doing.
In solo devising, a failed improvisation or an image that doesn’t work is not a disaster — it is information. It tells you what this character is not, what this story does not need, where the dramatic potential does not lie. This information is as valuable as the material that survives into the final performance.
The capacity to approach failure with curiosity rather than defensiveness is a hallmark of effective creative practice. Document failed explorations honestly in the folio — they demonstrate genuine creative risk-taking.
APPLICATION: Before each devising session, set a specific play-making goal (not “work on the performance” but “today I will improvise every possible physical version of this character’s first entrance and find the one that most clearly communicates X”). Focused play-making generates more useful material than open-ended exploration, particularly in the later stages of the devising process.
