AQA A-Level Drama and Theatre (7262)

## Learning Outcomes

- Understand how _Jerusalem_ works as both social realism and mythic theatre
- identify how Johnny “Rooster” Byron can be interpreted as both a man and a symbol
- Explain how English identity, authority, freedom and community are presented in performance
- Analyse the play from performer, director and designer perspectives
- Understand how social, cultural and historical context shapes interpretation
- Use specific moments from the play to support exam answers
- Structure analytical and evaluative written responses for the AQA written exam

## AQA A-Level Drama and Theatre (7262) Syllabus

For the AQA A-Level Drama and Theatre (7262), you are expected to understand _Jerusalem_ as a set play from a practical theatre-maker perspective, with a focus on the following syllabus points:

- Know that _Jerusalem_ is a **List A** set play and must be studied through at least two theatre roles such as performer, director or designer
- Understand that the play premiered at the **Royal Court Theatre in 2009**
- Identify the significance of the setting: a **woodland clearing in Wiltshire on St George’s Day**
- Explain how Johnny “Rooster” Byron is presented as both a realistic outsider and a mythic or folkloric figure
- Understand how the play explores **English identity**, **authority versus freedom**, **community and exclusion**, and **myth versus modern bureaucracy**
- Analyse how meaning is created through acting, staging, lighting, sound, costume and set
- Recognise the importance of the final drum sequence as ritualistic and ambiguous rather than simply realistic
- Embed social, cultural and historical context into practical analysis rather than adding it separately

## Test Your Knowledge

_Attempt these questions before reading this article. If you find some difficult or cannot remember the answers, look more closely at that area during your revision._

1. Why is Johnny “Rooster” Byron often seen as both a man and a myth?
2. How does the St George’s Day setting shape the play’s presentation of Englishness?
3. What practical choices could a director make to show the conflict between authority and freedom?
4. How could a designer make the woodland clearing feel both realistic and enchanted?
5. Why is the ending of _Jerusalem_ often described as ambiguous?

## Introduction

Jez Butterworth’s _Jerusalem_ is one of the most important modern British plays on the AQA course. It is set in a woodland clearing in rural Wiltshire on **St George’s Day** and centres on Johnny “Rooster” Byron, a charismatic outsider facing eviction from the land he occupies. The play mixes gritty realism, dark comedy, folklore and ritual. That blend is what makes it powerful in performance.

For the exam, you should avoid treating _Jerusalem_ as only a literary text. AQA expects a **theatre-maker perspective**. That means analysing how the play would work on stage through acting, direction and design. Strong answers focus on specific moments, practical choices and audience response.

> **Key Term: theatre-maker perspective**
> An approach that explains how meaning is created in performance through acting, directing and design choices, rather than mainly retelling plot.

## Rooster Byron as character and symbol

Johnny “Rooster” Byron is the centre of the play. Almost everything is shaped by his presence, his stories, his energy and the reactions he provokes in other people. As a performer, this role demands huge range. Rooster must be funny, dangerous, boastful, manipulative, wounded and strangely moving, sometimes within a single scene.

> **Key Term: anti-hero**
> A central character who lacks some qualities of a conventional hero, but still commands audience attention and sympathy.

Rooster works on two levels at once.

First, he is a realistic figure. He is a drinker, drug dealer, absentee father and social outcast. He lives in disorder. He can be irresponsible and selfish. His dialogue is full of swagger, jokes and evasion. If played only as lovable, the character becomes sentimental. If played only as vile, the audience will not understand why others are drawn to him.

Second, he is a symbolic or mythic figure. He is linked to giants, spirits, ancient England, the forest and ritual. He behaves like a local legend and others talk about him as if he is larger than ordinary life. His speeches often move beyond everyday realism into heightened storytelling. This duality is vital. Rooster is both a failed man and an embodiment of a wilder England under threat.

> **Key Term: mythic**
> Presented in a way that suggests legend, folklore or symbolic meaning beyond ordinary realism.

As a performer, you could show this through:

- a commanding vocal range, shifting from comic chat to prophetic intensity
- physical ease in the clearing, making it feel like his natural kingdom
- sudden stillness during storytelling, so the audience leans in
- visible physical damage later in the play, showing decline beneath the myth

A director can reinforce Rooster’s status by making other characters orbit him. Early in the play, people arrive at his clearing, seek him out, react to him and depend on him. Later, the same space can show his isolation when people leave him behind.

> **Test Tip:** In performer or director questions on Rooster, do not just say he is “charismatic”. Explain how voice, pace, gesture or proxemics create charisma, and what effect that has on the audience.

### Key moments for Rooster

Several moments are especially useful in exams.

The opening establishes him through absence and then defiance. The council officers serve notice, but Rooster answers through mockery. This is practical and theatrical. He dominates the space before the audience has even fully met him.

His storytelling creates his legend. In performance, these speeches should not feel casual. Their rhythm, pauses and eye contact can make the audience wonder whether to believe him.

His scene with Marky reveals failed fatherhood but also tenderness. This prevents him being reduced to a simple rebel figure.

The final drum sequence raises him from social realist outsider to ritual summoner. At that point he can be staged as battered, cornered and yet still theatrically huge.

## Englishness, folklore and the subverted pastoral

The title _Jerusalem_ alludes to William Blake’s vision of England as a “green and pleasant land”. Butterworth uses that idea, but complicates it. His England is not neat, patriotic and respectable. It is messy, violent, comic, mystical and divided.

> **Key Term: Englishness**
> Ideas, symbols and values associated with English identity, often shown as contested rather than fixed.

The St George’s Day setting matters. This is England’s national day, so the whole play is framed by questions of identity. But Butterworth does not show official pride in any simple way. Instead, he sets village festivities against drunkenness, boredom, petty cruelty and state pressure. Rooster becomes a rival version of England: unruly, ancient, anti-official and tied to the land.

> **Key Term: state-of-the-nation play**
> A play that uses characters and events to comment on the condition, values or conflicts of a country at a particular time.

The woodland clearing is more than a location. It is a symbolic space where different ideas of England collide:

- official England: council notices, law, eviction, planning, regulation
- communal England: fair day, songs, local memory, gathering
- folkloric England: giants, spirits, wild garlic, drumming, ritual
- damaged England: drugs, violence, neglect, failed lives

This is where the idea of the **pastoral** becomes important. Traditionally, pastoral writing idealises the countryside as peaceful and pure. Butterworth undercuts that. His rural setting contains magic and beauty, but also rubbish, danger and decay.

> **Key Term: pastoral**
> A style or idea that presents the countryside as natural, simple or idealised.

Rooster’s clearing is therefore a **subverted pastoral**. It still holds wonder, but not innocence. A designer should show both truths at once.

### How to stage the clearing

A realistic set might include:

- the caravan
- party debris and rubbish
- plastic chairs, crates, old domestic objects
- signs of long-term occupation and neglect

But the same set should also suggest enchantment. That can be done through:

- the arrangement of trees and open space
- carefully chosen props with symbolic charge, such as the drum
- sound of birds, distant fairground noise, wind, aircraft
- a gradual shift in lighting from daylight realism to something more shadowed or ritualised
  > **Key Term: liminal**
  > Existing on a threshold or border between two states, such as reality and myth, or freedom and control.

The clearing is a liminal space. It is between village and forest, childhood and adulthood, myth and bureaucracy, sanctuary and trap.

> **Test Tip:** Avoid vague design comments like “dark lighting creates tension”. Say when the lighting changes, what it reveals, and how that links to a theme such as myth, danger or isolation.

## Authority, freedom and community

One of the strongest tensions in _Jerusalem_ is between control and freedom. The council officers, legal notices and threat of eviction represent order, regulation and modern authority. Rooster represents personal freedom, anti-establishment energy and refusal to submit.

> **Key Term: anti-establishment**
> Opposed to official institutions, authority or accepted social rules.

The play does not make this simple. Rooster’s freedom is attractive, but also destructive. He offers shelter and excitement to young people, yet he also exposes them to drugs and chaos. The authorities want him gone, but the world replacing him is not shown as humane or rich in spirit. That is why the play resists easy judgement.

Community is also unstable. Rooster gathers people around him, but he cannot sustain them. They drift in and out. Some exploit him. Some admire him. Some fear him. By the end, many have abandoned him. A director can stage this through the pattern of entrances and exits. In early scenes, the clearing is crowded and lively. Later, pauses and empty space become more important.

> **Key Term: proxemics**
> The use of distance and positioning between actors to show relationships, status or tension.

For example:

- Rooster at the centre of a loose group suggests informal authority
- Characters hanging back from council officials can show institutional power
- Lee and Davey close together but uncertain at the caravan door can suggest guilt and dependence
- Rooster alone in a large stage picture near the end shows the collapse of community around him

Wesley is useful as a contrast to Rooster. He represents pub respectability, local status and the burden of ordinary adult life. His frustrations also show that mainstream life is hardly ideal. Ginger shows devotion and damage. Lee shows the longing to escape and reinvent the self. Dawn and Marky bring fatherhood and consequence into focus.

### The ending and why it matters

The final sequence is one of the most important parts of the play for exam answers. Rooster is beaten, abandoned and threatened with eviction. Yet the play does not end with bureaucratic victory. Instead, he curses the council, invokes his ancestors and beats the drum.

> **Key Term: ritualistic**
> Performed in a repeated or ceremonial way, suggesting deeper symbolic meaning.

This ending should not be treated as straightforward realism. It is ambiguous. We do not know whether any giants or spirits will answer him. What matters is the theatrical transformation. A director might build this through:

- isolating sound, with the drum dominating the stage
- dimming the world outside the clearing
- concentrating light onto Rooster and the drum
- pacing the invocation to grow in intensity
- creating a final image of resistance rather than defeat

The audience may feel awe, pity, uncertainty or even fear. A strong answer explains that range of possible responses.

## How to write about Jerusalem in the exam

AQA rewards precise theatre analysis. The best answers stay close to the question, use specific moments from the play, and explain audience effect.

> **Key Term: audience response**
> The emotional, intellectual or sensory effect created for spectators by performance choices.

A useful paragraph structure is:

- identify a specific moment
- explain the theatre-maker choice
- analyse what it suggests
- link to audience response
- connect back to the question

For example, if asked about design and mood, do not write generally about “a messy set”. Instead, explain how the cluttered caravan and debris create a believable social realist encampment, while the later shift in sound and lighting turns the same space into a ritual battlefield.

If asked about acting Rooster, choose moments with clear shifts: comic bravado, storytelling, tenderness with Marky, or the final invocation. Explain how you would vary voice, posture, tempo and eye contact.

If asked about context, integrate it. Do not bolt on a paragraph at the start saying that the play is about modern England. Show how a practical choice expresses that context.

### Common mistakes

Students often:

- retell the plot instead of analysing stagecraft
- ignore ensemble relationships and focus only on Rooster
- treat the play as only social realism and forget folklore or ritual
- make vague statements about sympathy without explaining how performance creates it
- add context generically instead of embedding it in interpretation
  > **Test Tip:** If the question gives you a role such as director or designer, answer as that role throughout. Do not drift into a general literary essay.

## Key Point Checklist

_This article has covered the following key knowledge points:_

- _Jerusalem_ premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in **2009**
- The play is set in a **woodland clearing in Wiltshire on St George’s Day**
- Johnny “Rooster” Byron should be understood as both a realistic outsider and a mythic figure
- The play explores **Englishness** as divided between official identity and a wilder, older cultural inheritance
- The clearing functions as sanctuary, kingdom, battleground and trap
- The rural setting can be read as a **subverted pastoral**, mixing beauty with decay
- Authority is represented through the council, eviction notice, law and regulation
- Freedom in the play is attractive but also damaging and unstable
- Community gathers around Rooster but does not finally protect him
- Practical analysis should include acting, directing, set, sound, lighting and audience effect
- Rooster’s speeches and status shifts are central for performer and director answers
- The final drum sequence is ritualistic and ambiguous, not just realistic

## Key Terms and Concepts

- theatre-maker perspective
- anti-hero
- mythic
- Englishness
- state-of-the-nation play
- pastoral
- liminal
- anti-establishment
- proxemics
- ritualistic
- audience response


Set plays: List A - Butterworth: Jerusalem