Research Presentations - A Rough Start

The first few months of this year we will be doing a little bit of Theater of Cruelty, but we will mostly focus on our theater research presentations. I am a bit scared for this exam in particular, because this is the first year that it has been incorporated into the IB Theater curriculum and none of us (yes – not even Mrs. Morris) are completely sure what would get a student a 7 in this presentation. Hence, I would definitely say working with a new curriculum is proving to be a challenge.

I contemplated a lot about what theater tradition I should look into – while I think studying a unique world tradition such as Noh or Rakugo would be interesting, I felt like researching Greek Tragedy. I’ve noticed that Western Theater Traditions, although maybe more cliché for research purposes, interest me a lot more than theater traditions from other parts of the world – maybe it is because I have grown up with the concepts presented in these traditions. As we sat down in a circle as a class after deciding upon what theater traditions we wanted to research, Jonathan said “I’m doing Greek tragedy.” My heart fell because I had already started researching about this tradition, and I was really interested in it, but Mrs. Morris had warned us not to do the same topic in fear that the examiner of our class would grade us more harshly if we had two students doing the same tradition. Out of respect for Jonathon, I compromised my first choice and decided to instead research Victorian Melodrama, another tradition that I found very interesting due to its popularity even in contemporary society as seen through modern adaptions of this melodrama such as soap operas. The next class we sat down to finalize our theater traditions once again: to my despair, this time Talah said she would like to do Victorian Melodrama as well. This time, instead of changing my topic, I realized a little bit of healthy competition would only push me to work harder on my own presentation. Although, I would say that this competition also proves to be a challenge, as it wouldn’t be good if the examiner marked my presentation more harshly based on its juxtaposition with a better one of Talah’s.

As I prepare to present my initial findings of this theater tradition next class with my peers, I am developing my research skills by looking for credible sources on the internet about this genre while also checking out books from the school library regarding theater and melodrama. I have not been able to practice these research skills earlier in theater, so it is exciting to be developing a new skill.