Exam Practice: Performer, Director and Designer
Every student sitting the written paper for a set play answers with a printed extract in front of them — but the questions are not limited to that extract. The paper is open book, and you may bring a clean, unannotated copy of the play with you. The compulsory questions ask you to think and write about your play as a performer and as a designer, so this lesson builds a toolkit of concrete moments, ready-made vocal and physical choices, and named design decisions you can adapt to whatever extract you are given.
The set-play section always asks you to think as a performer and gives you the option, in one question, of answering instead as a designer — choosing lighting, sound, set or costume. A separate compulsory question links design to social, cultural or historical context, or to the theatrical conventions of when the play was written. You must know the whole play, not just the printed extract, because any question can range across it.
Command words signal what kind of answer is expected. “Identify” or “name” wants a single precise fact. “Define” or “what is meant by” wants a short explanation of a term. “Explain” or “describe the effect of” wants a named choice and its impact on an audience. “How would you interpret” as a performer or designer wants specific vocal, physical or technical detail anchored to a named moment. “Analyse the playwright’s intentions” wants you to explain why Tanika Gupta made a particular structural or dramatic choice.
Reading the Extract Without Losing the Whole Play
Only one extract from The Empress is printed in front of you, but your answer should show command of the whole two-act structure. If the extract is the Tilbury dismissal in Act One, where Susan Matthews tells Rani “No written contract you understand” and turns her out with a month’s wages, a strong answer might reach forward to the final scene at Tilbury docks in Act Two, where Rani and Hari return fourteen years later and the compass motif closes. Naming moments precisely — by act, scene and what happens — is worth more than a vague summary of “the docks scene”.
Answering as a Performer
Performer questions want both a vocal choice and a physical choice, tied to a specific moment, with a stated effect on the audience. This means thinking about blocking — where a character stands, kneels or moves — and about proxemics — how close or far apart characters are. In the Tilbury dismissal, the stage direction has Rani kneel and grab the hem of Susan’s dress: that single piece of blocking, plus a close proxemic distance forced on an unwilling Susan, does more work than any line of dialogue.
Vocally, Rani might begin controlled and formal — she has rehearsed this appeal — then break into pleading as Susan refuses to hear her, her pitch rising and her breath shortening on the accusation that there was an agreement. Physically, she drops to her knees and grabs the hem of Susan’s dress in front of passers-by, a public, humiliating gesture that shows how little power she has left.
The effect on the audience is a swing from sympathy to anger: they watch a sixteen-year-old publicly beg a woman who has already decided to abandon her, and see Hari’s intervention dismissed as a “vagabond sailor” in the same breath. Performing the contrast between Rani’s composure and her collapse makes the injustice visible rather than simply stated.
Answering as a Designer
Designer questions want the same precision applied to lighting, sound, set or costume: name the element, anchor it to a moment, and state its effect. The Royal Shakespeare Company’s original production used black and white film projected onto canvas and gauze, with platforms at different levels for the ship, the royal apartments and the London households. A designer answer might use a cross-fade between two of these framed spaces to suggest they exist in the same historical moment without ever touching.
After Queen Victoria’s death, the stage direction describes the sound of a bonfire intensifying until it “fills the stage with a red glow” as Abdul’s letters are burned. A designer might use a slow lighting cross-fade from the pale, formal light of the funeral scene into this saturated red wash, paired with a recorded crackling-fire sound effect that swells under Lady Sarah’s instructions. Costume design strips Abdul of his royal livery and turban on stage, re-dressing him as an ordinary civilian while the red light builds.
The effect is to make abstract loss of status physically visible: colour and sound do the emotional work that Abdul’s silence performs in the text, showing fourteen years of closeness reduced to ash and a change of clothes.
Rani and Queen Victoria never meet in The Empress — the closest the play comes is a stage direction in Act Two where Rani sees Victoria in the Diamond Jubilee procession. The compass is the play’s clearest object-symbol: Abdul gives it to Rani at Tilbury docks in Act One, and she returns it to him at the same docks in the final scene of Act Two. Any answer must respect these facts.
Linking Design to Context: the Compulsory Question
The compulsory question links a design or performance choice to context or convention, so your answer needs a genuine historical fact, not just a description of colour. Ayahs travelling to Britain were often listed on passenger records only under their employer’s name, and lascars made up roughly seventeen and a half per cent of sailors on British-registered ships by 1914. A costume designer could use this to justify dressing Rani in a plain, sombre English nanny’s uniform once Georgina employs her — a visual erasure of her own identity that mirrors how ayahs were recorded in real ship’s papers. This is stronger than describing the play’s style as simply stylised without evidence.
Comparing Staging Configurations
Extended answers sometimes ask you to weigh up a staging configuration. Consider the final Tilbury docks scene, where Abdul kneels to kiss the ground before he is sent back to India. In a thrust stage, the audience surrounding him on three sides would make his kneeling feel exposed and communal, almost a public farewell witnessed by everyone. In a proscenium arch, the same gesture becomes a distant, framed image, more like a formal portrait — useful if a director wants to hold Abdul at a respectful distance, almost as history rather than as a person the audience shares a room with.
The Extended Staging Response
Act One Scene Fifteen uses split staging: Abdul teaches Victoria her first words of Hindi in one space while Rani places her newborn on the ground at the docks in another. A director might light Victoria’s side warm and Rani’s side cold, keep the Hindi lesson’s dialogue audible while underscoring Rani’s side with near-silence, and slow the transition between them so the audience registers both stories are happening in the same historical year.
Whatever the mark value, the strongest answers repeat the same pattern: name the moment precisely, name the choice precisely, and state exactly what the audience thinks or feels as a result.