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The Tutor as Audience: Approaches to Examining Student Performance

Ever since the creation of the first Departments of Drama in British universities soon after the Second World War, the most problematic aspect of assessing student work has been in the practical area – in the disciplines of acting and directing, and the design and execution of set, costume, lighting, and sound. Can acting genius be measured on the same scale as honest effort showing worthwhile progress? How far should any assessment reward individual effort and accomplishment, and how far the student's contribution to the collaborative effort which is the finished production? Should there even be a ‘finished production’ – and if so, how far should audience response and the chemistry of a particular performance affect a tutor's knowledge of the process involved? Indeed, are there criteria which can make any one or two tutors’ individual impressions more than merely impressionistic? The following paper by Val Taylor, who teaches in the Drama Department at Roehampton Institute, tackles this last area in particular. While it began as an internal discussion document, it seemed to us to raise relevant issues so fully and succinctly as to deserve wider dissemination, not only among colleagues in British universities, but among all those called upon to measure developing theatrical skills.