Learning in Drama involves students making, performing, analysing and responding to drama, drawing on human experience as a source of ideas. Students engage with the knowledge of drama, develop skills, techniques and processes, and use materials as they explore a range of forms, styles and contexts.

Through Drama, students learn to reflect critically on their own experiences and responses and further their own aesthetic knowledge and preferences. They learn with growing sophistication to express and communicate experiences through and about drama.

Making in Drama involves improvising, devising, playing, acting, directing, comparing and contrasting, refining, interpreting, scripting, practising, rehearsing, presenting and performing. Students use movement and voice along with language and ideas to explore roles, characters, relationships and situations. They learn to shape and structure drama including use of contrast, juxtaposition, dramatic symbol, cause and effect, and linear and episodic plot forms.

Responding in Drama involves students being audience members and listening to, enjoying, reflecting on, analysing, appreciating and evaluating their own and others’ drama works.

Both making and responding involve developing practical and critical understanding of how the elements of drama can be used to shape and structure drama that engages audiences and communicates meaning. Learning in Drama is based on two fundamental building blocks: the elements of drama and the ways that narrative shapes and structures dramatic action. The elements of drama work dynamically together to create and focus dramatic action and dramatic meaning. Dramatic action is shaped by dramatic tension, space and time, and mood and atmosphere to symbolically present and share human experiences for audiences.