Plan a play with the elements of drama, write it in real script format, rehearse your lines with a read-aloud cast, then print the script and a playbill.
1Plan: pick a story starter or write your own idea, make a card for each character and fill in the elements of drama. Plan up to 3 freeze frames.
2Script: add scenes and type lines like "SAM: Where is my dog?" or "[Sam looks under the bench]". The studio formats them for you.
3Stage: put each character on the stage map for every scene, write blocking notes and list your props and costumes.
4Rehearse: choose your character. Others read their lines aloud or one at a time while you learn yours, then run it with the teleprompter and timer.
5Perform and reflect: give two stars and a wish. A finished play has named characters, a problem that builds to a climax, an ending, and a printed script and playbill for the audience.
Australian Curriculum v9.0 · The Arts · Foundation-Year 6
Drama Script Studio takes children from an idea to a performance. Pick one of 18 story starters (a lost pet, a problem on a space station, a bushfire evacuation drill, a time-travel classroom, market day, a fairy tale with a twist and more) or invent your own. Plan with the elements of drama: character cards with wants, feelings, voice, movement and costume, then situation, place and time, tension that builds to a climax, mood, symbol and focus. Design up to three freeze-frame tableaux on a stage grid with levels and facial expressions. Write the play in proper script format with scene headings, colour-coded character names, stage directions and sound and lighting cues; the editor formats lines as you type and shows the word count and running time. Rehearse by choosing your character: the other parts are read aloud or shown one at a time, a line-learning mode hides your words bit by bit, and a teleprompter scrolls at your speed with a timer. Plan the staging with a stage map, blocking notes, props and costumes, practise good audience manners, give two stars and a wish, and print a real script and a playbill.
Top Tip
Every good play has someone who wants something and something that gets in the way. Before you write, finish this sentence: "___ wants ___, but ___." Then make the problem get worse before it gets better.
Skills You Are Practising
Creating characters with wants, feelings, voice and movement
Using the elements of drama: role, situation, place, time, tension, mood, symbol and focus
Building tension to a climax and resolving it
Making freeze-frame tableaux with levels and facial expression
Writing a play in standard script format with stage directions and cues
Learning lines and cues and rehearsing with others
Using stage areas, blocking, props and costumes
Being a respectful audience and giving useful feedback
In the real world
Playwrights write scripts in this format so actors, directors and crew can all follow the same plan. Stage managers call the sound and lighting cues, directors plan the blocking, and actors learn their lines by running cues, just like rehearsals at school concerts, community theatre and TV sets.
For parents & teachers
Read the other parts aloud at home so your child can practise their cues, or switch on the read-aloud voice.
Watch a freeze frame and guess the feelings before your child explains it.
Ask "What does your character want?" and "How does your voice or walk show that?"
Be the audience: sit still, listen, clap at the end, then give two stars and a wish.
Who it suits: Foundation to Year 2: pick a starter, make two or three characters, show feelings with faces and freeze frames, and act out a short scene with a grown-up reading the other parts. Years 3 and 4: plan tension that builds, write a two or three scene script with stage directions, and rehearse with cues. Years 5 and 6: use symbol, mood and focus on purpose, add sound and lighting cues, block every scene on the stage map, learn lines by heart and run to a target time.
Australian Curriculum v9.0
This game practises these content descriptions. Tap a code to see its full wording and other games for it.
AC9ADRFC01(Foundation The Arts)create arts works that communicate ideas
AC9ADRFD01(Foundation The Arts)use play, imagination, arts knowledge, processes and/or skills to discover possibilities and develop ideas
AC9ADRFP01(Foundation The Arts)share their arts works with audiences
AC9ADR2C01(Year 2 The Arts)create and co-create fictional situations based on imagination and/or experience
AC9ADR2D01(Year 2 The Arts)use the elements of drama and imagination in dramatic play and/or process drama
AC9ADR2P01(Year 2 The Arts)share their drama in informal settings
AC9ADR4C01(Year 4 The Arts)improvise and/or devise and shape drama using the elements of drama to communicate ideas, perspectives and/or meaning
AC9ADR4D01(Year 4 The Arts)use the elements of drama to explore and develop ideas for dramatic action in improvisations and/or devised drama