Station 3 · Criterion B · max 8 each strand
Devise your piece
Two strands. Strand i is your practical exploration, filmed throughout your rehearsals. Strand ii is your artistic intention and how clearly you justify your choices.
Starting points
Your group will create a devised performance in an Expressionistic style that questions power and privilege. These are starting points, not scripts. Your group chooses its own stimulus after the workshops.
Whatever you choose, the IB asks that you are respectful of sensitive personal and cultural issues. Question systems and the way power works rather than targeting real people or specific communities.
Four questions to test any idea
- Who holds the power and who does not?
- What boundary keeps them apart?
- What does that system feel like from the inside for the person with least power?
- How will the audience see the system differently by the end?
If your idea can't answer all four, it isn't ready yet.
The Ranking
Stimulus: a school report, a results table or a leaderboard.
Who decides what a person is worth? What happens to the people at the bottom of the list?
A station drama following The Student through a sequence of tests, each one run by an archetype: The Examiner, The Parent, The Tutor, The Institution. The student is gradually renamed with a number. Try a chorus chanting grades in Telegrammstil, a desk that grows taller in every scene and the scream at the point the student is reduced entirely to a score.
The Replaceable
Stimulus: a news headline about jobs being taken over by machines or artificial intelligence.
When a company can replace you, who has the power in the relationship?
The Worker repeats one task until the ensemble begins doing it faster and better. Each station takes away another piece of what made the worker human. Try a mechanical ensemble driven by a metronome or a loop of office sound, a gradually dehumanised voice and a final image of the worker alone in an empty space while the machine keeps working. It links to Mr Zero in The Adding Machine.
The Label
Stimulus: the care label inside a piece of clothing.
Who pays the real price for cheap things?
Two worlds on one stage: The Shopper in a bright shop and The Maker in shadow. The ensemble connects them, passing a single garment from one world to the other. Try a factory rhythm built from body percussion, contrasting lighting for each world and a moment when the boundary breaks and the two figures see each other.
Any technique from the Station 1 technique bank is fair game. Choose the ones that suit your idea, not all of them.
What you submit
One PDF of 4 pages and one video. The written work is in two parts.
The foundation, about 2 of your 4 pages: your artistic intention, a moodboard with one specific image to scene link and how you got ideas on their feet.
The development journey, the remaining 2 pages plus the video: three scenes shown developing, with written analysis anchored to exact timestamps.
The development video and the final performance video together must run 9 minutes or less, so plan this video against your performance length.
Practical exploration: film your rehearsals all the way through
What matters most at Criterion B
For every choice you show or write about, explain the impact on the audience and link it back to your artistic intention. Then analyse and justify it: why you made that choice and why it works better than what you tried before.
Your own practical exploration: playing with ideas, getting them up on their feet, rehearsing the ideas that worked and the ideas that did not and showing how you moved from having no idea to developing scenes. The examiner wants to see your journey. Examiners report the most common reason students miss top band here is showing only one technique.
- Film every rehearsal, from the first workshop to the last run through. Your development video is edited from this footage, so the more of the process you capture, the more real progress you'll have to show.
- Choose three different scenes from your piece, not three stages of rehearsal time. Pick scenes that genuinely changed.
- For each scene show 3 or more progressions: the original idea, what did not work and what you added or refined.
- Label each scene with on screen titles so the examiner can follow the video.
- Show multiple techniques across the three scenes, production as well as performance.
- Include at least one progression that came from peer or audience feedback.
Multiple approaches tried, refined and evaluated, with clear progression the examiner can watch happening.
Artistic intention and choices: justify every decision
Reasons for your choices and an evaluation of why those choices are effective. Every progression needs the impact it had on an audience. At 5 to 6 you explain. At 7 to 8 you justify.
- Name your theme: the argument your piece makes about the topic, not just the topic.
- State the SOI directly and explain how your theme answers it. As a claim, not a quote.
- Say what you want the audience to do. Think? Question? Confront?
- Name the stimulus and show the line from stimulus to scene.
- Name the Expressionistic techniques you will use and say why they suit your theme.
“Using expressionism to emphasize the lack of genuine relationships in the increasing virtual world, I will include exaggerated and fragmented body movements to display the destroyed, emotional states curated by the media, demonstrating a lack of order and complex inner turmoil.”
The style is named, then the techniques, then what each one will show the audience. Notice it's about the inner state of the people on stage.
- Identify the change. Shows the examiner you made a deliberate choice.
- Timestamp it. Without a timestamp it does not look like you have evidence.
- Explain why you made the change.
- Analyse how it improved the intention.
- Link to the impact on the audience and the SOI. This completes the cycle from choice to meaning and justification.
“Afterwards, as seen at 00:31, the idea sparked to include frames, as the cuboid shape greatly resembles the screen of a phone. By each of us ‘escaping’ the frames, it was clear in showing how individuals are simply representations of their phones.”
The change, the timestamp and the reason come in that order and the symbol is explained rather than just used.
Reasons and an evaluation of why the choices are effective, with critical reflection on your own process.
Mark bands, strand i, practical exploration
The official MYP Arts assessment criteria.
Mark bands, strand ii, artistic intention and choices
Things that quietly cost marks at Criterion B
- Only one technique shown. Examiners report this is the most common reason students miss top bands at strand i. Show multiple techniques across all three scenes.
- Picking three scenes that did not really change. If your scene looked the same in week 1 and week 6, it is the wrong choice for the development video. Pick scenes where you can show genuine progression.
- Not filming enough rehearsals. If you only film a few sessions, you won't have the footage to show how the piece really developed.
- No timestamps. If the claim is not anchored to a moment the examiner can see, it does not exist.
- Discussing footage that is not in the video. The examiner only has the video you submitted. Nothing outside it can be marked.
- Too many progressions, too shallow. Quality over quantity. Three deeply unpacked progressions per scene beat seven mentioned in passing.
- Artistic intention written once and never revised. After the performance, return to your artistic intention and re justify it in light of what actually happened. This is where 5 to 6 becomes 7 to 8.
See the structure in a top grade 7
Last year's piece is Brechtian, so read it for how an artistic intention covers all five elements and how a scene is written up change by change with timestamps.