Notes · Drama and TheatreUK · A-Levels

Set play from List B

This topic teaches the method of studying the second set play, chosen from List B - a modern play - from all three roles of performer, designer and director, and shaped into a coherent directorial interpretation. It covers the modern play and its world, forming and defending an overall concept, realising that concept through performance and design, and answering the longer, more demanding multi-perspective exam question. As with List A, AQA rotates the set plays, so the focus is on transferable interpretive method rather than any particular title.

5 sections~20 min reading time2 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 3 · Advanced 1

T·0666 / 15

Exam profile

AO3 · Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of how a modern set play could be developed and performedAO4 · Analyse and evaluate a coherent interpretation of a modern set play from all three roles

Operators:identifyexplaininterpretconceivejustifyanalyse

basic level

AS-Level expects secure knowledge of the play and the ability to propose justified choices from the roles for specified moments.

higher level

The full A-level requires a coherent directorial concept for the modern play, realised across all three roles, and sustained in an extended multi-perspective answer.

Depth

Text

Contents · 5 sections

Set play from List B

What a List B set play is#

FoundationAQA 7262 Component 1 (set play from List B)Ofqual GCE Drama and Theatre subject content

List A and List B study compared

Fig. 1Both set plays are studied for performance in the open-book exam through justified choices - but List A is pre-1956 from at least two roles, and List B is modern, from all three, and concept-led.

The second set play studied for the written examination is chosen by your centre from List B: a list of modern plays. Where List A gathers plays first performed before 1956, List B belongs to the theatre of the modern era - work made in and for a theatrical world closer to your own, with a wider range of styles, forms and staging possibilities than the older tradition. Whatever title your centre selects, you are studying a modern play whose conventions and concerns you can often relate more directly to contemporary theatre and to your own experience of it.

The defining feature of the List B study is that you approach the play from all three roles - performer, designer and director - not just two. This makes it the more demanding of the two set-play studies, because you must hold the whole of theatre-making in view: how the play would be performed, how it would be designed, and how a director would unify the two into a coherent interpretation. It is not enough to have ideas from one or two angles; you must be able to think across the whole production.

Because of this, the List B question in the exam is typically the longer, more searching one, often asking you to develop and sustain an overall interpretation of the play rather than to comment on a single isolated choice. It rewards conceptual thinking - a governing idea about what your production of the play would say and how every element would serve it - alongside the specific, justified choices that realise the concept. This is why the List B study is where your directorial thinking matters most.

As with List A, the exam is open book and the play is studied as a piece for performance, not as literature; and as with List A, AQA rotates the List B titles across specification cycles, so the transferable method - reading the modern play as theatre, forming a concept, realising it through the roles, and answering the extended question - matters far more than any particular text. The sections that follow build that method, beginning with the modern play and its world.

Worked example

Seeing what makes the List B study distinctive

A student has studied their List A play well from performer and designer angles. What must change in how they approach their List B play?

Add the third role
The List B play must be studied from all three roles, so the student must add sustained directorial thinking to the performer and designer work they are used to.
Think at the level of the whole
Rather than only commenting on individual moments, they must form an overall interpretation of the play - a concept for what a whole production would say.
Prepare for a longer question
They should expect a longer, more demanding question that asks them to develop and sustain that interpretation, not just to answer about one isolated choice.
Keep the method
The underlying method is the same - read the play as theatre, make justified choices for the audience - but scaled up to the whole production and all three roles.

Result: The List B study extends the familiar method to all three roles and to the level of a whole-production concept, sustained in a longer answer - the distinctive demands of the modern set play.

Typical mistakes

Studying the modern play from only one or two roles when all three are required.
Offering isolated choices with no overall interpretation, when the List B question rewards a coherent concept.

Active revision

For any modern play you know, write one sentence describing its world and one sentence proposing what an overall production of it could try to make an audience feel or think.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA AS and A-level Drama and Theatre (7261 / 7262) specification (AQA)

The modern play and its world#

StandardAQA 7262 Component 1 (modern play knowledge and context)Ofqual GCE Drama and Theatre subject content

Understanding the modern play

Fig. 2The modern play is understood through its text, its form and style, its context, and the wide staging possibilities it opens - all feeding an interpretation.

Studying the List B play, like any set play, begins with secure command of the text - its plot and structure, characters, themes and language - and of its context. Modern plays, however, come in a far wider range of forms than the older tradition: some are naturalistic, unfolding a believable slice of life in real rooms; others are non-naturalistic, using fragmented structure, direct address, non-linear time, symbolism or overtly theatrical devices. Identifying the play's form and style is an early and important task, because it shapes how the play must be read and staged.

The modern play's context is often closer to home but no less important. Its social, cultural and historical context - the world it depicts and was written for, the issues and attitudes of its time - shapes its meaning, and understanding that world lets you decide how to present it to a contemporary audience. Many modern plays engage directly with social and political questions, or with personal and psychological experience, and grasping what a play is really concerned with is the foundation of a coherent interpretation of it.

The theatrical context of a modern play is especially rich because the modern theatre offers so many staging possibilities. A modern play may have been written for, or may invite, staging configurations beyond the picture-frame stage - thrust, in-the-round, traverse, promenade or flexible studio spaces - and may draw on the whole modern vocabulary of lighting, sound, projection and design. Understanding the theatrical possibilities the play opens up is central to studying it from all three roles, and gives your directorial concept a wide field of choices to work with.

As always, this knowledge serves performance. You read the modern play and its world not to accumulate facts but to understand it deeply enough to form and defend an interpretation and to make and justify choices from every role. Because the play is modern and multi-form, you have more interpretive freedom than with an older text - more decisions to make about form, style, staging and meaning - which is both the opportunity and the challenge of the List B study, and the reason it rewards clear conceptual thinking.

Worked example

Reading a modern play's form to guide its staging

Your List B play uses direct address to the audience and jumps freely in time rather than unfolding as a continuous naturalistic story. What does this tell you about staging it?

Identify the form
Direct address and non-linear time mark the play as non-naturalistic - it does not pretend the audience is not there, and it does not obey real time, so a realistic-room staging would fight the play.
Draw the implication
The form invites a more openly theatrical staging: a flexible or bare space, visible transitions between times, and a relationship with the audience that acknowledges them rather than sealing them out.
Match design to form
Design choices should support the fluidity - lighting that shifts time and place quickly, a set that transforms or stays deliberately abstract, sound that bridges the jumps - rather than building solid, literal rooms.
Let it shape the concept
The form becomes part of the concept: a production that embraces its theatricality and its direct relationship with the audience, using the freedom the form offers rather than resisting it.

Result: Reading the play's non-naturalistic form directs the whole approach to staging it - toward theatricality, fluidity and a live relationship with the audience - showing how understanding form guides interpretation.

Typical mistakes

Failing to identify the play's form and style, and so misreading how it should be staged.
Treating context as background rather than as the ground for an interpretation and for justified choices.

Active revision

For your List B play, write one note identifying its form and style, one on its central concern, and one on a staging configuration that could suit it - with a reason for each.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: Ofqual - GCE AS and A level qualifications (Ofqual)

A director's concept for the whole play#

StandardAQA 7262 Component 1 (directorial interpretation)Ofqual GCE Drama and Theatre subject content

A concept spread across the production

Fig. 3The directorial concept sits above the whole production, governing performance, set, lighting and sound, and costume so they speak with one voice.

At the heart of the List B study is a directorial concept for the whole play: a governing interpretation that says what your production is about and how it will communicate that to a contemporary audience. A concept is more than a setting or a gimmick; it is a considered idea about the play's meaning and how you want the audience to experience it - what you want them to think and feel, and the lens through which you want them to see the story. A good concept is rooted in the play itself, drawn out of the text rather than imposed on it.

Forming a concept means deciding on the big interpretive questions: the play's central meaning as you read it, the style and period in which you will stage it (faithful, updated or abstracted), the world and atmosphere you will create, and the response you want from the audience. Different directors legitimately reach very different concepts for the same play, and there is no single right answer - what matters is that your concept is coherent, defensible and genuinely supported by the text, so that it illuminates the play rather than distorting it.

The value of a concept is that it unifies every other decision. Once you know what your production is trying to do, each performance, design and staging choice can be tested against it: does this choice serve the concept? A strong concept makes the many decisions of a production hang together into a single, purposeful statement, and it is what turns a set of separate ideas into an interpretation. This is why the List B study rewards conceptual thinking so highly - it is the spine that holds a whole-production answer together.

In the exam you may be asked directly for your interpretation of the play, or a question focused on one aspect will still be strengthened by an implicit governing idea. Either way you should be able to state your concept clearly and defend it from the text, and then show how it shapes the specific choices you propose. The discipline to practise is moving between the two scales - the big concept and the specific choice - and always being able to explain how the one flows from the other.

Worked example

Building and defending a concept

You read your List B play as being fundamentally about how a family's silence about the past poisons the present. Build a defensible concept from this reading.

State the meaning
Fix the central meaning you have found: the destructive weight of what is left unsaid, so the audience should feel the pressure of the family's buried past throughout.
Choose style and world
Stage it in a claustrophobic, naturalistic domestic world that slowly feels like a trap - rooms that seem to close in - so the setting embodies the theme of suffocating silence.
Define the intended effect
Aim for a mounting unease in the audience, a sense that something withheld is always about to surface, so they experience the silence as tension rather than merely hearing about it.
Defend from the text
Anchor the concept in evidence - the play's evasions, its loaded pauses, the moments the past intrudes - showing the interpretation is drawn from the play, not imposed on it.

Result: A reading of the play becomes a defensible concept - a stated meaning, a matching style and world, an intended effect, and textual justification - the coherent interpretation the List B study is built on.

Typical mistakes

Confusing a concept with a mere setting or gimmick imposed on the play rather than an interpretation drawn from it.
Making choices with no governing concept, so the production does not add up to a coherent interpretation.

Active revision

Write a one-paragraph directorial concept for your List B play: state its meaning as you read it, the style and world you would stage it in, and the effect you want on the audience - then justify it from the text in one sentence.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA AS and A-level Drama and Theatre (7261 / 7262) specification (AQA)

Realising the concept through performance and design#

StandardAQA 7262 Component 1 (realising an interpretation)Ofqual GCE Drama and Theatre subject content

From text to concept to realisation

Fig. 4The interpretation flows from the text to a concept and then to its realisation through performance and design - reaching the audience as one coherent effect.

A concept is only as good as its realisation, and the List B study asks you to show how your interpretation would actually reach the audience through performance and design. Realising the concept means translating the governing idea into concrete choices in every role: how the actors would play their roles to serve the interpretation, how the set and staging would create the world it needs, how lighting and sound would build its atmosphere, and how costume would tell the audience what the concept wants them to know. Each choice should be traceable back to the concept.

In performance, realising the concept means guiding the characterisations so they express the interpretation. If the concept is about suffocating silence, the performances might favour restraint, held tension and loaded pauses; if it is about the machinery of power, they might favour coldness, formality and controlled stillness. The performer's specific vocal and physical choices become instruments of the whole idea, and the director shapes them so that individual performances pull together rather than apart.

In design, realising the concept means choosing each element to build the world and mood the concept requires. The staging configuration positions the audience in the relationship the concept wants (intimate, confronted, surrounded); the set embodies the world (a trap, a machine, a wasteland, a home); lighting and sound create the atmosphere; costume signals period, character and meaning. The coordination of these elements - so they reinforce one another and the concept - is where a whole-production interpretation becomes visible and audible on stage.

The discipline to master is the constant link between concept and choice. For any moment or element you discuss, you should be able to say both what the specific choice is and how it serves the governing interpretation and its intended effect on the audience. This two-way traceability - concept down to choice, choice back up to concept - is exactly what a strong List B answer demonstrates, and it is what proves that your production is a coherent interpretation rather than a collection of unrelated ideas.

Worked example

Realising one concept across the roles

Your concept for the List B play is that ordinary life is haunted by an unspoken dread. Realise this concept in one scene across performance and design.

Realise it in performance
Direct the actors to play the surface of ordinary life normally but let small physical tells - a glance held too long, a hand that stills, a beat of hesitation - leak the dread beneath, so the audience senses something wrong.
Realise it in set and staging
Set the scene in a recognisable everyday space but subtly off - too clean, too still, slightly too large - and stage the characters with small unexplained distances between them, embodying the unease.
Realise it in light and sound
Keep the lighting ordinary but let it be very slightly cold and flat, and run a barely perceptible low sound under the scene that the audience feels more than hears - the dread made atmospheric.
Check the traceability
Confirm every choice serves the concept: the leaking performances, the off-normal space, the cold light and sub-audible sound all build the same haunted-ordinariness the concept names.

Result: A single concept is realised across performance and design with traceable choices that all build one effect - the coherent, concept-led realisation the List B study rewards.

Typical mistakes

Stating a concept but never showing how specific performance and design choices would realise it.
Proposing choices that do not clearly serve the concept, so the interpretation loses coherence.

Active revision

Take your concept for the List B play and write four choices that realise it - one performance, one set/staging, one lighting or sound, one costume - each with a line explaining how it serves the concept.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: Ofqual - GCE AS and A level qualifications (Ofqual)

Answering the List B exam question#

AdvancedAQA 7262 Component 1 (extended multi-perspective response)Ofqual GCE Drama and Theatre subject content

Structuring the List B answer

Fig. 5The List B answer reads the question, states a concept, and develops multi-role choices held together by that concept - a coherent whole-production response.

The List B question is typically the longest and most demanding of the set-play questions, often asking you to explain how you would realise an aspect of the play, or the whole of an extract, drawing on all three roles and sustaining an overall interpretation. Answering it well starts, as always, with reading the question precisely - its focus, its extract, and whether it fixes or leaves open the roles - and then organising a substantial answer that stays anchored to that focus while showing the range and coherence a whole-production study requires.

The engine of the answer is the same choice-anchor-effect move as any set-play response: name a specific, achievable choice, tie it to the text, and explain its intended effect on the audience. What lifts a List B answer is that these choices are drawn from all three roles and are visibly held together by a governing interpretation. A strong answer moves between performer, designer and director choices while keeping them in service of one concept, so the examiner sees not a list but a coherent production being realised on the page.

Coherence is therefore the decisive quality. Because the question is broad and multi-perspective, it is easy to produce a sprawling answer that touches many things thinly and adds up to nothing. The remedy is a clear guiding interpretation that every paragraph serves and returns to, so the many choices cohere into a single argument about how you would stage the play and why. State or imply your concept early, then let it discipline the whole answer.

Manage the extended-response demands as you would for List A, but at greater scale: plan a shape, develop points rather than listing them, cover more than one role, use precise textual reference from the open book, and keep asking 'and what does that do for the audience?'. The examiner rewards a theatre maker's sustained, coherent, audience-focused vision of the play realised across the roles - so the goal is to make the reader see and understand your whole production, not merely a series of disconnected ideas about it.

Worked example

Keeping a long answer coherent

A List B question asks how you would realise a whole extract for your audience. You have many ideas across all three roles. How do you keep the answer coherent?

Lead with the concept
Open by stating your governing interpretation of the extract - what you want the audience to feel or understand - so the whole answer has a spine to hang from.
Select, do not dump
Choose the choices that best serve that interpretation rather than including every idea; a few developed, concept-serving points beat a long thin list.
Move between roles under the concept
Bring in performer, designer and director choices, but present each as serving the same interpretation, so the range strengthens rather than scatters the answer.
Return to the effect
End each developed point, and the answer, by tying back to the intended effect on the audience, keeping every paragraph accountable to the concept and the question.

Result: The long, multi-role answer is kept coherent by leading with a concept, selecting concept-serving choices, and returning always to the audience effect - the sustained, unified response the List B question demands.

Typical mistakes

Producing a sprawling, thin answer with no governing interpretation to hold the many choices together.
Staying in one role when the question invites the full range, or drifting into narration under the pressure of the longer answer.

Active revision

Take a whole-extract List B question, state your concept in one sentence, then plan five developed points across at least two roles, each a choice anchored in the text with its effect on the audience.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA AS and A-level Drama and Theatre (7261 / 7262) specification (AQA)

References & sources

Sources

AQA

AQA AS and A-level Drama and Theatre (7261 / 7262) specification

Ofqual

Ofqual - GCE AS and A level qualifications

Set play from List B

5 sections~20 min reading time2 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 3 · Advanced 1

Set play from List B

Key points

Seeing what makes the List B study distinctive

Key points

Reading a modern play's form to guide its staging

Key points

Building and defending a concept

Key points

Realising one concept across the roles

Key points

Keeping a long answer coherent

Sources

Set play from List B

Key points

Seeing what makes the List B study distinctive

Key points

Reading a modern play's form to guide its staging

Key points

Building and defending a concept

Key points

Realising one concept across the roles

Key points

Keeping a long answer coherent

Sources