Reading the Anforderungsbereiche as a drama teacher

The Einheitliche Prüfungsanforderungen in der Abiturprüfung for Darstellendes Spiel (KMK, 2006) organise assessment across three Anforderungsbereiche. Like every KMK document, they are written to cover every subject, which makes them precise about structure and vague about what any of it looks like in a room.

Translating them is worth doing once, properly, because the three levels map onto improvisation work more cleanly than they do onto most practical subjects.

AFB I — reproduction

Reproducing known material and applying learned procedures in a familiar context.

In a drama room: executing a given form. A student who can hold a tableau, keep a rhythm, use a rehearsed entrance, or apply a warm-up correctly is operating here. In improvisation specifically, it is holding a constraint that was explained — never speak first, and they do not.

It is the level most easily observed and most easily undervalued. A group that cannot reproduce a form cannot vary it, and the temptation to skip past AFB I produces students who improvise vaguely because they were never asked to do anything precisely.

AFB II — reorganisation and transfer

Reworking known material, and applying what was learned in a changed context.

This is where most improvisation work sits. The student knows how status functions; the scene is new. They have practised accepting offers; this offer is one nobody anticipated. The knowledge is transferred rather than reproduced, and the transfer is visible in the moment it happens.

The assessable event here is the adjustment. Not that the scene was good — that depends on the partner — but that something learned was applied to something unrehearsed, legibly enough for a room to see.

Almost every well-designed improvisation exercise is an AFB II task with a constraint that makes the transfer necessary.

AFB III — reflection and evaluation

Working on complex material with independent reasoning, evaluating, and justifying a choice against alternatives.

In practice: a student who chose a means and can say why that one rather than another. It shows up in two places, and only one of them is written.

The written one is the reflection — the Werkstattbuch, the exam essay, the justification of an artistic decision. The unwritten one is the choice itself. A student who abandons a tactic mid-scene because it is not working, and takes a different one, has evaluated under pressure. Whether you can assess that depends on whether you saw it, which is an argument for the notes rather than against the level.

Where the three break down

The Anforderungsbereiche assume the work is the student’s. In group improvisation it is not entirely, and the document does not help with that. A student operating at AFB III in a scene that collapsed because somebody else blocked has still done the AFB III thing, and any Bewertungsraster has to say so explicitly or it will not survive contact with a real class.

The other gap is that all three are silent about speed. Improvisation is reorganisation under time pressure, and time pressure is most of the difficulty. Two students who both transfer a technique correctly, one in a considered pause and one at the pace of the scene, have not done the same thing — and nothing in the three levels distinguishes them.

Naming that in your own criteria is worth the sentence it costs.

The practical use

Not to relabel everything. The value is diagnostic: when a lesson is not working, one of these is usually the reason.

A group that cannot do the exercise is usually being asked for AFB II when it has not been given AFB I. A group that finds it easy and boring is usually being kept at AFB I when it is ready to transfer. And a reflection that produces nothing is usually an AFB III demand on work the group has not yet done enough of to have alternatives to compare.