Dramatic Extract – Dialogue Competition: What It Is, Where It’s Run and How It’s Judged

Two actors perform one extract from a play together, entered by school grade and judged on how well the pair share a scene within a strict time limit.

Dramatic Extract – Dialogue is the paired class of a dramatic extracts section: two performers take a scene from a play in which two characters talk to each other, and perform it together as a self-contained piece. The word “extract” matters. The pair are not staging a whole play or writing their own sketch, but lifting a scene out of a longer text and making it work on its own in front of an adjudicator who has not seen the rest.

On the template that carries this class the entry is grouped by school grade rather than by age directly: Grade 3-4, Grade 5-7 and Grade 8 to Open. The time limit rises with each band, from 3 minutes for the youngest pairs to 5 minutes for the middle band and 6 minutes for Grade 8 and above. A pair therefore competes against others at a similar school stage, and older pairs have room to build a scene with a beginning, a turn and an ending.

An entry is one pair, one extract and one grade class, and it runs as a team entry: the two performers are marked as a unit rather than as two soloists. It sits beside a solo monologue and a group scene for three or more actors in the same section, which are separate items. The dialogue is the class where listening matters as much as speaking, because a scene only works if each actor visibly reacts to what the other says.

Organisers value the class because it is a gentle step between solo work and a full ensemble: two actors are easier to rehearse, easier to schedule and easier to judge than a large cast, yet the performance still has to show relationship, pace and shared timing. The data we build from does not say whether the extract must be memorised or whether the choice is open, so check the syllabus you are following before you commit to a piece.

Where Dramatic Extract – Dialogue is run

In eTalenter’s data this class is carried by one template, a speech and drama section from a bilingual Afrikaans and English eisteddfod in the Western Cape, South Africa, so that is the only place we can honestly point to. Two-person acting classes exist at many competitive speech and drama festivals in several countries, usually under the name Duologue; the catalogue keeps those as separate pages because their age bands, time limits and rules differ from this grade-based class.

• South Africa (Western Cape eisteddfod speech and drama section)

Key facts

• Paired entry: two performers, two characters, one extract from a play, marked together as a team.
• Entered by school grade: Grade 3-4, Grade 5-7 and Grade 8 to Open, with the Grade 8 band open to any older entrant.
• Time limits on the template: 3 minutes for Grade 3-4, 5 minutes for Grade 5-7 and 6 minutes for Grade 8 to Open.
• Open to both genders and to any pairing; the template sets the language of the class to English.
• Marked as a single overall score on the 10-point judge scale the template uses; no per-criterion marks are printed, so none are assumed here.
• Idea starters, not rules: two friends deciding whether to tell a secret, a pupil and a caretaker arguing over a lost key, a brother and sister packing to leave home, two strangers sharing a delayed train.

On eTalenter, Dramatic Extract – Dialogue is filed under Action and typically scored with Marks. It appears in 1 ready-made event templates — each one can adjust its time limit, age-group assignment and scoring setup independently.

Across the templates that use it, Dramatic Extract – Dialogue is most often entered as an Team competition, typically scored out of 10, commonly time-limited to 3–6 minutes where a limit is set.

What judges look at in Dramatic Extract – Dialogue

What a Dramatic Extract – Dialogue panel is actually weighing up, and where the marks are usually won or lost:

• Partnership: the two actors visibly listen and react to each other, so every line lands as a reply and the scene never sounds like two separate recitations.
• Clarity of the two characters: voice, posture and manner make it easy to tell who is who and how they feel about each other from the first exchange.
• Shared timing and pace: cues are picked up cleanly, pauses are chosen rather than accidental and neither actor rushes or waits for a prompt.
• Command of the extract: lines are secure for both performers and the cut makes sense as a stand-alone scene with an intentional start and finish.
• Use of the time limit and the playing space: the scene fits inside the grade’s limit with a proper ending, and movement is purposeful rather than wandering. This list is general advice, since the template prints no scoring table.

Treat these as the judging focus, not a fixed rubric: publish your own weighted criteria for Dramatic Extract – Dialogue under Scoring Setup, or start from the full drama & skit judging criteria guide.

How to prepare for Dramatic Extract – Dialogue

How entrants and their teachers usually get Dramatic Extract – Dialogue right on the day:

• Choose a scene in which both characters have something to want and something to say; if one part is a few lines and the other carries everything, the pair will look unbalanced.
• Read the whole play together so both of you know what has happened before the scene and where the characters are going afterwards.
• Time the extract against the limit for your grade (3, 5 or 6 minutes) and trim to a clean ending rather than a cut-off.
• Rehearse with eye contact. Run the scene once in which you only speak after you have properly heard the last word of your partner.
• Agree the staging early: where each of you stands, when you move and who is facing the adjudicator, so no one has their back to the room at the key moment.
• Practise recovering from a slip. Decide in advance that if one of you loses a line the other keeps the scene alive, and rehearse it once.
• Rehearse in front of someone who has not seen the play and ask them to describe the relationship between the two characters; if they cannot, the opening needs more work.
• Teachers: confirm each pupil’s grade class on the entry date in the syllabus, and check which grade a mixed-grade pair enters in before registering.

Frequently asked questions

Is Dramatic Extract – Dialogue judged individually or as a team?

Across eTalenter’s templates it’s most often run as an Team entry, though an organiser can set either participation type when assigning the item to an age group.

What is a dramatic extract dialogue?

It is a scene for two actors taken from a longer play and performed on its own. The pair has to make the situation and the relationship clear without the rest of the play around them.

Is this the same as a duologue?

They are close relatives, both being two-person acting classes. This page covers the dialogue class in a dramatic extracts section, graded by school grade, while duologue pages elsewhere use different age bands, limits and rules, so eTalenter keeps them separate.

How long can our dialogue be?

It depends on your grade class: 3 minutes for Grade 3-4, 5 minutes for Grade 5-7 and 6 minutes for Grade 8 to Open. Keep inside the limit and plan a proper ending.

Is it judged individually or as a team?

As a team. Unlike the monologue in the same section, which is a solo entry, the dialogue is entered and marked as a pair.

Do we have to learn the extract from memory?

The data we have does not say. Read the syllabus for the festival you are entering, because rules on memorisation and on whether the piece must come from a set list vary between festivals.

Want the full judging picture? Read the full drama & skit judging criteria guide, or browse every action competition item.