Section I decoded: one mandatory question that works for both Australian topics

1. What Section I actually is

Section I of the HSC Drama written paper is the Australian Drama and Theatre (Core Study). It is worth 20 marks of the 40-mark paper, you are told to allow about 45 minutes, and there is exactly one question — Question 1 — which every candidate in the state must answer. There is no choice inside the section. NESA's assessment and reporting page sets the expected length at around six pages of the Drama Writing Booklet, which it equates to approximately 800 words.

The defining design feature is that the single question is written so that it is applicable to both topics. Half the state studied Topic 1 (Dramatic Traditions in Australia) and half studied Topic 2 (Contemporary Australian Theatre Practice), so the examiners cannot name a play, a playwright or even a period. Instead the question names a theatrical idea — characters and settings, stage images, theatrical moments, the staging space, how plays could be staged — and links it to an idea about Australian society or audiences. Beneath the question the paper prints both set-text lists, separated by OR, so you can see the question genuinely belongs to everyone.

Every question since 2021 has also ended with the same instruction in substance: refer to TWO plays you have studied and your own experiential learning. That is three sources of evidence, not two. Treat the instruction as part of the question, because the marking guidelines do: the top band requires insightful and relevant supporting evidence including reference to two plays, and the guidelines define supporting evidence as examples, quotations, evidence from the text, real or imagined productions and practical experiences.

Finally, remember what Section I is not. It is not a literature essay on themes, it is not a context lecture, and it is not a review of a production you saw. It is a question about how theatre makes meaning for an audience, answered by someone who has worked on these plays in a drama room.

2. How the question has shifted, 2021 to 2025

Reading five years of Question 1 in sequence shows a pattern you can prepare for without memorising an answer. In your own words, the recent questions have asked:

• 2021 — how characters and settings were used to stage political and social ideas.
• 2022 — how stage images provoke an audience.
• 2023 — how theatrical moments challenge ideas about Australian society.
• 2024 — how the staging space shapes meaning.
• 2025 — how the plays could be staged to share diverse concerns with audiences.

Three things stay constant. Every stem opens with How, which asks for explanation of a process, not a yes/no verdict. Every stem pairs a theatrical lens (character, setting, image, moment, space, staging) with a social or audience lens (political ideas, provocation, challenge, meaning, diverse concerns). And every stem ends by asking for two plays and experiential learning.

What changes is the theatrical lens. So the useful preparation is not a single thesis but a bank of staged moments from each play that can be read through any lens: a moment you can describe in terms of space, image, character, sound and audience position all at once. If your bank holds four or five such moments per play, any lens the examiners choose can be met with evidence that was genuinely selected for the question on the day.

Because the set texts changed for the 2025–2027 HSC, only the 2025 paper used the current lists. The 2021–2024 questions are still excellent practice stems; simply answer them with the current plays.

3. The three criteria and what each band rewards

The paper prints three things your answer is assessed on: knowledge and understanding of drama and theatre relevant to the question; expressing a point of view with appropriate supporting evidence; and a sustained, logical and cohesive response. The published marking guidelines translate these into five bands: 17–20, 13–16, 9–12, 5–8 and 1–4.

Notice the verbs climb from comment, to outline, to describe, to explain substantially, to explain insightfully. The jump from 9–12 to 13+ is the jump from describing what happens to explaining how the theatre makes it mean something to an audience. The jump into 17–20 is about insight: noticing a tension, an irony, a choice that could have been made otherwise, and showing why the choice matters.

Marking is holistic. Markers do not tick off a quota of examples; they read the whole response and place it in the band it best fits.

4. What markers say separates better responses

NESA's marking feedback for the written paper repeats the same advice year after year, and it is the most reliable guide to what moves a mark. In summary:

• Use reading time on the question. Work out what is being asked before you decide which moments to use.
• Use the question's key words throughout — not just in the introduction — and avoid the language of past questions or a pre-prepared answer.
• Staging means the choices made by theatre makers (directors, designers, actors), not the stage directions the playwright wrote. The 2025 feedback said this explicitly.
• Use staging workshops as evidence in both sections, showing a practical understanding of theatre as a live medium.
• Consider the impact on the audience of every decision you describe.
• Answer the question rather than relying on a prepared response built around themes.

The 2024 feedback on the space question added detail about what strong answers did: they named specific ways space was used (proxemics, blocking, lighting, set, stage type), identified features of Australian society and how audiences might respond, drew on workshops and imagined or directed scenes, and used their experience as actor, director and audience member.

Take one practical rule from this: every body paragraph should contain at least one sentence that begins with the audience. 'An audience watching this...', 'From the back row...', 'In our studio staging, the audience was placed...'. That single habit forces the analysis the top band rewards.

5. Planning in reading time and the first five minutes

You have five minutes of reading time and then 90 minutes of working time for both sections. Use reading time to read Question 1 and your Section II question, and to make silent decisions — you cannot write in reading time, but you can plan in your head.

A reliable decision sequence:

1. Underline mentally the theatrical lens (e.g. 'staging space') and the audience or social lens (e.g. 'meaning about Australia').
2. Write a one-sentence answer in your head that uses both lenses. This becomes your thesis.
3. Choose two moments per play that best show the lens. Prefer moments with strong visual and spatial features.
4. Choose one workshop for each play that you actually experienced and that tested a staging choice.
5. Decide the structure: play-by-play, or idea-by-idea with both plays inside each paragraph.

When writing begins, spend no more than three minutes on a skeleton in the margin. A typical skeleton: thesis; paragraph 1 (play A, moment 1 + workshop); paragraph 2 (play A, moment 2); paragraph 3 (play B, moment 1 + workshop); paragraph 4 (play B, moment 2); short conclusion that returns to the question's wording.

Integrated structures — where each paragraph discusses one idea through both plays — can score very highly because they force comparison, but they are harder to sustain under time pressure. If you are not confident, the play-by-play structure with explicit linking sentences is safer and still capable of the top band.

6. Turning a theme into a staged answer: worked example

Take a constructed practice question: How do Australian plays use contrast on stage to unsettle an audience's sense of who belongs? Refer to TWO plays you have studied and your own experiential learning.

A Band 9–12 opening sounds like this: 'Australian plays explore belonging and identity. In Norm and Ahmed, Buzo shows racism in 1960s Australia. In The Removalists, Williamson shows violence and authority.' Nothing is wrong, but nothing is theatrical, and the question's word 'contrast' and the idea of unsettling have vanished.

A Band 17–20 opening sounds like this: 'Both plays build their unease from contrast that an audience can see: a familiar Australian voice set against a body it has decided does not belong. Buzo places a friendly, talkative veteran and a polite student under a single streetlight and lets the audience laugh at the banter until the contrast turns violent; Williamson opens with comic bureaucratic routine in a police station and contrasts it with escalating brutality in a domestic flat. In our studio stagings, contrast in lighting, proxemics and vocal register was what made the audience's laughter curdle.'

The second version does four things: it adopts the question's key word; it names concrete stage elements (streetlight, station, flat, proxemics, register); it states the audience effect; and it signals experiential evidence. Every body paragraph then expands one of those promises with a specific moment and a workshop.

Practise converting a theme sentence into a staging sentence until it is automatic. The formula: [practitioner] stages [idea] through [element] at [moment], so that the audience [effect].

7. Time, length and handwriting realities

Forty-five minutes per section is a hard limit in practice: if Section I runs to an hour, Section II is cut to thirty minutes and almost always loses a band. Watch the clock and move on at 45 minutes even if your conclusion is a single sentence.

The expected length — about six booklet pages, approximately 800 words — is a guide to what a complete answer looks like, not a target to pad towards. A focused 750 words with two detailed moments per play will outscore 1,100 words of plot retelling. Equally, 400 words cannot show 'insightful' and 'sustained' across two plays plus workshop evidence; under about 600 words most responses drop to the 9–12 band simply because the evidence is too thin.

Practical routines that work:

• Write timed answers from Term 2 onward, by hand, in 45 minutes, and count your words. Most students write 15–20 words per minute in an exam.
• Keep paragraphs to one idea, five to eight sentences, with the first sentence answering the question and the last linking back to it.
• Use play titles in full the first time, then a short form. Name characters precisely.
• Quote sparingly. A few words of dialogue are enough; a described stage moment is often stronger evidence than a quotation.
• Leave a line between paragraphs so markers see your structure.

Remember the paper allows extra writing booklets; never cramp your final paragraph because you are running out of pages. If you finish early, reread for places where a sentence describes plot and convert it into a sentence about staging and audience.