IB Diploma Programme Theatre SL (first assessment 2024; current guide). The research presentation is shared by SL and HL (35% at SL): plan, deliver and video-record an individual presentation of 15 minutes maximum on an UNFAMILIAR world theatre tradition, providing evidence of academic and practical research with a list of all sources cited. This handout teaches the research-and-presentation craft and kits the traditions most commonly chosen. All worked framings are original.

Must-know for the research presentation:

A world theatre tradition 世界戏剧传统 is a living performance system: its convention 惯例 (the distinctive performance practice: a masked form, a chant, a movement code, a staging custom), its CONTEXT (where, when, for whom, inside what ritual or celebration or entertainment), its social function 社会功能 (what the performance DOES in its community — worship, protest, mourning, feast), and its AESTHETICS (the rules of beauty and effectiveness the tradition itself holds). The research runs on two legs, and the marks require BOTH: ACADEMIC (scholarship, primary accounts, interviews, recordings — properly cited) and PRACTICAL (the student learns the convention in workshops: attempting the mask, the drum pattern, the movement — and documents the attempts). Knowledge resides in the body: a presentation that only describes is half the task.

Research ethics 研究伦理: attribute living practitioners and sources; treat the tradition as its community's property (what may be learned, what performed, what is closed); avoid the stereotype compile and the exotic montage — the tradition is a system, not a curiosity. The presentation says what the researcher could NOT learn and why: the honesty the top band rewards.

Worked example. A student researching a masked dance-drama tradition: academic leg (the scholarship on the mask's meaning, an interview with a teacher-practitioner, festival recordings); embodied leg (workshop attempts at the posture and the walk, filmed — the first attempts failing is DATA: what the body must unlearn to wear the convention); presentation analysis (why the mask works only with the chant — the convention is a SYSTEM, and isolating one element breaks it, which the embodied failure demonstrates).

The 15-minute presentation 演示 is structured, not streamed: HOOK (30 seconds of the convention itself — the mask enters before the explanation); CONTEXT (the tradition's world: place, occasion, community, in two minutes); DEMONSTRATION (the embodied research shown: the workshop attempts, the learning curve); ANALYSIS (the convention unpacked as a system — what each element does, how the elements interlock, what the tradition's own aesthetics value); REFLECTION (what the research taught about theatre itself — the transferable insight, and the limits owned: what could not be learned from outside the community). The video is continuous and unedited: rehearse to the clock, and let the demonstration carry the analysis — show, then say what the showing showed.

Four commonly chosen families, each with its anchor convention and its intercultural lesson. COMMUNAL RITUAL FORMS: performance embedded in ceremony — the convention is the community's act, not a repertoire; the lesson: “theatre” and “ritual” are our boxes, not theirs. MASKED DANCE-DRAMA TRADITIONS (Asia): the mask as a spiritual technology — the performer becomes, not represents; the movement code trains years; the lesson: convention as accumulated body-knowledge. DANCE-THEATRE AND MOVEMENT CODES: codified gesture vocabularies where the hand's angle carries meaning; the lesson: movement as a language with grammar, learnable only in the body. STREET AND PROTEST FORMS: performance as public claim — the audience is the street, the state is the context; the lesson: theatre's function is political wherever it is made. The choice rule: a tradition the student can research BOTH ways — where practitioner contact or workshop access genuinely exists.

• The task's facts: 15-minute continuous video, academic AND practical evidence, sources list (task).
• The tradition researched as a system: convention, context, social function, aesthetics (tradition).
• The embodied leg: workshop attempts documented, failure as data (method).
• Ethics: attribution, ownership, limits owned (ethics).
• The presentation's five moves: hook, context, demonstration, analysis, reflection — show, then say (presentation).
• The four kits' anchor conventions and intercultural lessons (kits).

Boundary notes: the presentation is marked on research breadth and depth, practical exploration, presentation skill and reflection - the demonstration must carry the analysis. All worked framings are original.