Character in VCE Drama is not confined to psychological realism. Different performance styles offer radically different frameworks for creating, embodying and communicating character. Understanding how style shapes characterisation is essential for both devising and analysis.
A performance style is a coherent set of theatrical conventions, aesthetics and techniques that distinguish one form of theatre-making from another. VCE Drama requires students to work within, across or in reference to identified performance styles, applying their specific approaches to character.
| Performance Style | Approach to Character |
|---|---|
| Epic Theatre (Brecht) | Character as social role; actors demonstrate rather than become; gestus; direct audience address |
| Physical Theatre | Character expressed primarily through body, movement, rhythm and spatial relationship |
| Expressionism | Character as distorted, subjective projection of inner emotional state; exaggerated gesture |
| Absurdism | Character is often archetypal, reduced, or stripped of logical motivation |
| Verbatim / Documentary | Character built from real people’s words and mannerisms; precision of observation |
| Commedia dell’arte | Fixed stock characters (masks); exaggerated physicality; lazzi (comic routines) |
| Surrealism | Character operates in dreamlike logic; identity may be fluid, fragmented or symbolic |
| Magical Realism | Character navigates a world where the impossible is accepted as ordinary |
1. Working from the outside in (physicality first)
- Identify the physical archetype or gestus the style demands.
- Build character through stance, walk, gesture repertoire, and spatial behaviour.
- Common in physical theatre, commedia and Brechtian work.
2. Working from the inside out (psychology then physicality)
- Explore backstory, motivation and emotional life before externalising.
- More aligned with naturalistic or verbatim styles.
- In VCE, this approach must always be channelled through the chosen style’s conventions.
3. Working from the text or stimulus
- Extract character clues from language (rhythm, vocabulary, silence).
- Use hot-seating, thought-tracking and improvisation to extend beyond the stimulus.
4. Collaborative character development
- Play characters in relation to each other; ensemble rhythm and dynamics shape individual characterisation.
- Particularly important for ensemble performance.
In VCE Drama, characters are not static. Transformation — the ability to shift between characters, or to evolve within a character — is a core convention. The style chosen determines how transformation is signalled:
- Brechtian: announcement, a costume element removed/added, a shift in gestus.
- Physical theatre: a change in movement quality, spatial focus or rhythm.
- Expressionist: a sudden shift in light and vocal register.
VCAA values reflection on why specific stylistic approaches to character were chosen. Students should be able to explain:
- Which performance style(s) informed the character work and why.
- How the style’s conventions shaped specific physical and vocal choices.
- How those choices contributed to the work’s intended meaning and audience impact.
VCAA FOCUS: Examiners look for evidence that students understand the relationship between style and character — not that they simply adopted a style as decoration, but that the style’s conventions actively shaped how characters were created and communicated to the audience.
In VCE Drama, students rarely work in psychological realism alone. The study design calls for engagement with performance styles that require very different orientations to character. The key shift is from character as a psychological individual to character as a theatrical sign — a recognisable physical, vocal and spatial configuration that carries meaning for the audience.
In physical theatre, the character may not have a name, a backstory or a psychology. The character is their movement quality. In Brechtian theatre, the character has a psychology but it is subordinated to their social function — their gestus tells the audience more than their feelings do.
Students should practice moving between these orientations and be able to explain which orientation they adopted for their own work, and why.
Back to Back Theatre develops characters from the real identities and experiences of its ensemble members — a direct, personal approach to character within a highly stylised theatrical frame.
Complicité develops characters through physical exploration of images and objects, then gradually develops psychological specificity.
DV8 develops characters from verbatim research combined with extreme physical practice — character emerges from the intersection of documentary reality and physical abstraction.
Each of these approaches offers a different answer to the question “who is this character?” — and each is legitimate within its own theatrical logic.
VCAA FOCUS: Students who can articulate why they chose a particular approach to character — and how that approach is consistent with their chosen performance style — demonstrate a level of theatrical understanding that goes beyond technical execution.
