Australian Drama and Theatre quiz

David Williamson's The Removalists

Ray Lawler's Summer of the Seventeenth Doll

Jack Hibberd's Dimboola

Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman's The 7 Stages of Grieving

A single multiple-choice section of short objective questions on the prescribed playwrights, marked by computer rather than by an examiner

A practical group performance of a scene from a prescribed Australian play, assessed live by a visiting examiner

Section I, one extended-response question on the prescribed Australian Drama and Theatre material, worth 20 marks

An oral viva in which candidates answer spoken questions on the prescribed playwrights before a panel of examiners

The Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust and the commercial firm J. C. Williamson Ltd of the 1950s

Belvoir Street Theatre and the Sydney Theatre Company, both founded well after the New Wave

The Indigenous companies Kooemba Jdarra and Ilbijerri of the 1990s

The Australian Performing Group at the Pram Factory and the Nimrod Street Theatre

David Williamson

Ray Lawler, author of one famous play

Louis Nowra, known for Cosi

Jack Hibberd, author of Dimboola

Louis Nowra's Cosi, set in a psychiatric institution

Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman's The 7 Stages of Grieving

Hannie Rayson's Hotel Sorrento, a study of three sisters returning home

Michael Gow's Away, a coming-of-age memory play

Section II

Section III

Section I

Section IV

A large ensemble cast performing on a bare proscenium-arch stage with no scenery or properties at all

Strict fourth-wall naturalism confined within a single realistic domestic lounge-room set throughout the play

Verse dialogue spoken by a masked chorus in the classical Greek tragic tradition of Sophocles

A solo Aboriginal Australian performer integrating monologue with song, dance, and direct address

Discussing only one prescribed text and forgetting the other

Citing specific scenes precisely and naming particular professional productions to support the argument

Analysing dramatic form and performance conventions alongside their historical and cultural context

Maintaining a single sustained thesis consistently across every one of the body paragraphs

Belvoir Street Theatre, opened in Sydney in 1984

The Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust

The Nimrod Street Theatre, a New Wave venue

Moogahlin Performing Arts, an Indigenous company

Because markers do not expect any analysis of language and will penalise candidates who quote the dialogue directly

Because the prescribed texts have never been published as scripts and survive only as live performances on stage

Because it is a Drama topic, so staging, design, and performance style matter as much as words on the page

Because close analysis of performance and staging is strictly forbidden in the Section I extended response