Assessing Theatre Students

Learning how to access theatre students is difficult, I've discovered. Taking a written, multiple choice test is easy: they got the answer or they didn't. There's no if, ands, or buts. But when assessing a performance, there's more to consider. We gave an assessment in the form of a performance. Easy enough. That's how I was always assessed in the theatre while in school. And I thought it would be an easy and effective way to grade. But I discovered that it is a lot harder than I thought. A performance is very subjective. There isn't always a clear cut line on what's an A or a B. If you have a list of things that need to be included, then it's easy to take off points when things are missing. But when assessing character, it's much harder to grade that, especially with kids. Some are more comfortable than others performing and come off as better performers. Does that accurately show what they know and understand about what you have been teaching? Does the performance have to be perfect to get full points? What is a perfect performance? As I have been thinking about this, to me the most important thing when assessing students is grading the final performance coupled with your observations through-out the weeks of the unit. Making sure they are growing and that they are putting forth effort everyday into their work is a major part of their grade. And it should be. So assessment should be two parts: the final formal assessment, as well as the informal assessment of their progression, and assessing how much they've grown from the first day of the unit to the final performance. That to me is an accurate assessment of their knowledge.