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Pop culture

This project looks at popular culture and television. At the end of the project, students present a reality television show of their own devising to a specific audience.


The aims are to:

  • demonstrate that drama includes a variety of genres and styles
  • develop drama for a specific audience
  • increase confidence for performance
  • develop improvisation skills.

By the end of this project, students are expected to have:

  • created an appropriate role for the genre
  • developed a piece of drama based on a television show
  • developed confidence for performance, especially in monologues and duologues.

The skills covered in this project include (but are not limited to) hot seating, interviewing, marking the moment, passing the focus and still image.

The techniques which are covered in lessons in this project include:

  • duologue
  • improvisation
  • marking the moment
  • monologue
  • passing the focus
  • performance
  • rehearsal
  • sequencing
  • still image
  • storyboarding.

The key words which are used in this project include:

  • cliffhanger
  • climax
  • duologue
  • improvisation
  • marking the moment
  • monologue
  • peer assessment
  • self-evaluation
  • sequencing
  • soap opera
  • spotlighting
  • stereotype
  • storyboard.

The text which students encounter during this project includes textual stimuli and an extract from a reality television show.

This series of lessons has cross-curricular links with Citizenship, English and Media Studies.

Students should be assessed in this project on the extent to which they:

  • participate and perform with different techniques, eg monologues and duologues
  • develop a performance for an audience
  • use an appropriate style for the genre in performance
  • develop an appropriate character.

Web sites which could be used for further information on this topic include:

This project meets the following recommendations from Drama in Schools (Second Edition) (Arts Council England, 2003). For a complete mapping, see Managing: Drama in Schools.

Level 5: Making

  • Explore and interpret ideas, issues and relationships in their drama work, and structure it using appropriate dramatic forms, eg documentary drama, and conventions such as the use of the aside

Level 5: Performing

  • Improve and refine their acting, directing or technical contribution through the rehearsal process

Level 5: Responding

  • Relate, compare and contrast their work with drama from other times and cultures

Level 6: Making

  • Give and accept suggestions and ideas during the rehearsal process
  • Make plays which employ symbolic representations or effects to communicate meaning

Level 6: Performing

  • Make good use of available technology to enhance and support their productions

A printable version of the project is provided here:

A scheme of work for this project is provided here:


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