Every task page carries a table of success criteria, published before you start. Most groups read it once, on launch day, and never again — and then perform a piece that misses two rows they could have fixed in a single rehearsal. This page is that rehearsal.
We do it together the first time, out loud, on somebody else’s images, so that the move is not new to you the day it is your own work being judged.
The routine
- Open the task page and put the criteria table where the whole group can see it. On paper is better than on a phone.
- Go row by row. For each one say yes, not yet, or partly — and give one piece of evidence: the moment, the image, the thing an audience would actually see. “Yes” with no evidence is a wish.
- Find your weakest row. Not the easiest to fix — the weakest.
- Say in one sentence what you will change, and in which rehearsal.
- Change it, in the time that is left today or in the next working period. This is why the check is never scheduled on a performance day: a judgement you have no time to act on is just a worry in costume.
Steps 2 and 3 are the whole exercise. Naming your weakest row out loud is harder than any of the fixing, because it usually means saying the thing everybody in the group has been hoping nobody would mention.
One row, judged honestly
From Tableau Story Sequence: “Stillness — freezes are truly still: eyes, hands, breath under control.”
Partly. Images one and four hold. In image three Dev’s hand drifts every time, because he is holding the lantern above his head and his arm gives out at about eight seconds. Weakest row. Change: lower the lantern to chest height and let Sara be the high point instead — try it in the next working period, and if the image loses its meaning, change the moment rather than the arm.
That entry is worth more than “looks good” against all six rows, and it took less time to say.
Judging somebody else’s work is the practice run
The first time we do this, it is not your piece on the floor. That is deliberate: it is far easier to see a drifting hand in somebody else’s image than in the one you are standing in. Use Watching Like an Artist to describe before you judge, and Giving and Receiving Notes for how to say it — the two together are the whole method, turned inward afterwards.
Where this fits
Your judgement of your own work is not part of your mark, and neither is a classmate’s — see How Marks Work. That is deliberate, and it cuts both ways: nothing you say here can cost you anything, which is exactly what makes it worth saying honestly.
What it changes is the work. A self-check that leads to a fix is the cheapest improvement available in this course, and by the end of the course it is something your group does without being asked — which is the actual point.
Curriculum connection
B1.1
use the critical analysis process before and during drama projects to identify and assess individual roles and responsibilities in producing drama works (e.g., use journal writing, teacher-guided reflection, cooperative problem solving, writing in role, and discussion to identify team members’ skills and knowledge and assess their use in project tasks)
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B1.3
identify aesthetic and technical aspects of drama works and explain how they help achieve specific dramatic purposes (e.g., write a report outlining the technical and aesthetic strengths of a peer’s presentation, using appropriate terminology; describe how basic stagecraft has been applied in a drama; identify and explain or justify their own and others’ aesthetic decisions using journals, checklists, or rubrics)
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