Styles and genres for devising

The dominant Section C fault applied to style: "we did commedia and our play was about a servant tricking his master", then narrating the plot. A strong answer explains why the style suited the stimulus and intended effect, which specific conventions were used, and how they were sustained -- the "how", not the "what".

Treating a comic style like commedia dell'arte as an excuse for invented slapstick or jokes, missing its actual conventions -- stock characters, physical lazzi, contrast (the clever servant outwitting the foolish master), exaggeration. Name the specific convention used, not just that the scene was funny. The same applies to melodrama's devices (asides, clear-cut villainy).

Establishing a style at the start (a lively commedia opening, a documentary framing) then lapsing into naturalism once the "dramatic" middle arrives. Sustaining means the register, structural devices and design keep running through the whole piece, especially through genuine conflict, not just the celebratory or comic sections.

Picking a style for novelty rather than because its conventions can do something the stimulus needs. A style choice must be justified by what it achieves -- forum theatre suits a bullying stimulus because its replay-and-intervene structure lets an audience explore solutions a purely narrative style cannot.

Claiming the style "worked really well" with no specific convention, moment or audience response behind it -- the hallmark of a weak, low-band Section C comment. Attach a named convention and a concrete effect to every judgement about the style.

Thinking a single borrowed feature -- one commedia face, one line of direct address -- is enough to claim the piece "was in" that style. It is not: a style must be chosen and sustained. A lone borrowed gesture is an isolated feature, not working in a style. The syllabus requires you to choose AND sustain a style: its conventions must recur across the piece.