Exercise: Full-Class Tableau

This group exercise has layers. It combines planning, teamwork, performance skills, and introductory sound design. Students will create three tableau scenes to tell stories that evoke various emotions onstage, and use music clips to enhance the emotional stories. If your students have never done tableau before, you may want to have them try Numbered Tableaux or Flowing Frozen Pictures to practice. As a reminder, when doing tableau scenes, students must hold their frozen pictures for a minimum of five seconds (but often longer, as you’ll see in this exercise). And because your students will ask, yes, blinking and breathing are allowed. Instruction 1. Have students form small groups of three to five. 2. Determine which emotion you want your students to portray. If you wish, you can use our Tons of Emotion Prompts list for ideas beyond happy, sad, and angry. Decide whether the full class will work on the same emotion, or if each group will portray a different emotion. 3. Groups will create simple stories that can be portrayed through a series of three tableau scenes. The three scenes will represent the beginning, middle, and end of a story that evokes their assigned emotion. For example, if a group was assigned “despair,” they might create a story in which a child is playing with a toy, breaks it, and cries over it. Another group might be assigned “calm” and create a story with characters feeling upset at the beginning but then becoming calm by doing yoga, meditation, or tai chi. It’s up to the students to determine exactly how they will portray the emotion throughout the three scenes, but each scene must make sense with the other two and continue the story. The beginning scene will establish what’s happening, the middle scene will move the story forward, and the third scene will conclude the story. Every group member must be involved in each scene in some way, whether that is as a character, a prop, a piece of scenery or furniture, or another inventive use. They must hold each tableau scene for ten seconds. 4\ Each group will select three music clips (10 seconds per song) that evoke the emotional energy of each of the tableau scenes. The songs can be by any artist and from any genre but the clips must be appropriate for a school setting (i.e., no swearing, awareness of lyrical content). If the music has words, they don’t have to be a literal interpretation of the emotion, but students can incorporate the lyrics into their tableau scenes if they want to. Students will need to create a list of each clip with title and artist, what scene it’s for, and the exact cut of the music. For example, a group whose emotion is “playful” might create a list of clips like this: • Scene 1: “Take On Me” by a-ha (0:54–1:04) • Scene 2: “Physical” by Dua Lipa (2:13–2:23) • Scene 3: “I Feel Like Dancing” by Jason Mraz (3:20–3:30) Each group will need to submit their song clips list to the teacher ahead of performance time, so the teacher can make a playlist of the songs. (You can also assign this task to a student who does not wish to perform, has an interest in technical work, or wants to earn extra credit. It may also be helpful to designate a sound operator during performance time, so you can watch the scenes without having to multitask.) 5. Each group will perform their three scenes for the rest of the class. The teacher (or assigned sound operator) will play the first selected clip for the indicated ten seconds, pause for three seconds for the group to move to the next scene, play the second clip, pause for an additional three seconds, and then play the third clip. 6. Have students respond to the following questions, either as a group discussion or as a group written response (one page): • How did you come up with your story? • Why did you select the three clips you did? • What were some other options for songs that you considered? (Give at least three examples.) 7. Each student will complete and submit an exit slip (found in the giveaway below). Related Exercises:Creating Atmosphere Using Music Tableau Scenes from a Book Tableau Scenes from a Book Come to Life

Abstract theatre focuses on representing themes, ideas, situations, and emotions in a visual, stylized, symbolic way, rather than acting them out realistically. Using stylized physicality, students can express themselves in different and visually exciting ways. Let’s explore this through the lens of tableau scenes. Instructions1. Divide students into groups of 6–8. 2. Give each group a prompt from which to create a tableau scene. Here are some ideas to get you started: • Emotions: fear, joy, rage, anxiety, suspicion, boredom • Colours • Time: time passing, seasons changing, waiting for something to happen, growing up, a visual representation of a particular month or date • Situations: falling in or out of love, feeling pressured, dealing with parents/guardians, worrying about the future, feeling left out • Concepts: popularity, isolation, community, fashion, art, friendship, mess, growing up, safety, connectedness 3. Give students 10 minutes to come up with their tableau scene. If students need inspiration and time permits, you might have them do a word association exercise to come up with ideas to represent their theme. Every student in the group must be part of the scene somehow. For the first attempts at this exercise, students may only use themselves in the tableau scene — no costumes, props, or furniture may be included. Feel free to add these during subsequent rounds of this exercise if you wish. 4. How can students make their tableau scenes visually interesting? Consider the following: • Determine what the focal point of the scene is and build around that. • Use different levels: high, medium, and low. • Explore different ways to pose their bodies: sharp or bent angles, loose and flowing lines, curved or twisted poses, fluid versus flexed. • Use their full bodies: angles and/or placement of the head, neck, shoulders, elbows, fingers, hips, knees, feet — not just arms and legs. • Facial expressions are very important for portraying the emotion of the scene. • Explore how pairs or trios within the group could pose together — near or touching — to create different shapes and images. • Consider distance and proximity within the group. Are all the students grouped together? How close are they physically to each other? What could physical distance or nearness represent? Remember that students must hold their frozen poses for at least 10 seconds, so while they of course want their poses to be visually interesting, they also need to be physically achievable! So don’t plan on doing a risky or difficult move like a backbend, split, or pose on one foot if it’s not already within your skillset. 5. Once the 10 minutes are up, have groups present their tableau scenes for the rest of the class. You can have groups share their prompt topic and then present their tableau scene, or have students not share their prompt and have the rest of the students guess what the prompt was, depending on their interpretation of the frozen picture presented. 6. Groups should hold their frozen poses for at least 10 seconds. If possible, take a photo of each group’s tableau so they can actually see what they created and reflect on it. 7. For each group, discuss any or all of the following: • How did the students’ choice of poses in the tableau scene represent their concept? • What immediately caught your attention in the scene? Why? • What worked well? • What didn’t work so well? What might they do differently next time? 8. Once all the groups have presented their tableau scenes, have each student complete an individual reflection (found below).

This exercise was inspired by one of my favourite theatre games, Tableau Scenes from a Book. If you haven’t tried that game with your students yet, do that first! In the original version of the game, students were tasked with re-creating a photograph in tableau (frozen picture) format. In this version of the game, students start with re-creating the image in tableau. Then, they’ll take that a step further and use the tableau image as a jumping-off point to create their own short acting scenes in their small groups, without any previous directions or context from the source of the photograph. What do the students think is going on in the photo? What stories will they bring to life? Let’s find out. What You Need: • A book of photos of people, like a souvenir show program book (my favourite is the annotated script book of Peter and the Starcatcher as it has lots of photos of the original cast) OR A scrapbook album or selection of photographs of groups of people (photos can be black and white or colour, modern or vintage) OR A collection of magazine or catalogue tear-outs with photos of people. • Helpful Hint: You may wish to make copies of the selected images for each group, so they can refer to it without having to keep coming over to you. Directions: 1. Divide the class into small groups. Each group needs to have the same amount of people as in the photograph. 2. Select an image that has the same number of people as students in each group. All groups will use the same photo. If you know the history/background/story of the photo, do not share it with students in advance. 3. Each group will start by replicating the photograph in tableau and hold the pose for five seconds. Then, they will unfreeze and create a scene no longer than two minutes that is inspired by the photograph. The scenes will likely end up being “work in progress” scenes, with a basic outline and some improvised elements during the performance. We aren’t expecting polished scenes, but rather focusing on quick, creative thinking, teamwork, and evidence of effort. 4. Scene requirements: • Each student must have at least one line in the scene. • Students need to make choices about who their character is, and what their relationship is to the other characters. These choices need to be evident somewhere in the scene. • Scenes must have a clear beginning and end. • The beginning of the scene needs to make sense with the starting poses from the image, but from there, it can go in whatever direction the students wish. 5. Groups will have 10 minutes to prepare and rehearse their scene. They will need to work collaboratively to have their scene ready to go in time. If you wish, you can assign one student in each group to be the director. They’ll still participate as a performer in the scene, but will be the deciding vote in decisions if the group can’t come to a consensus. 6. Once the 10 minutes have passed, each group will present their scene to the rest of the class. As with the rehearsal, each group will start in the tableau replica of the image for five seconds, and then move into their scene. Even with the scenes being “work in progress” scenes, students should still remember theatre basics such as clear diction, good volume, and body awareness (cheating out towards the audience, clear character postures and movements, etc.). 7. If you wish, after all the scenes are presented, have a discussion with your class. Some topics you might wish to explore include: • Which presentation intrigued you the most? • Which presentation did you think was the funniest? • Which presentation would you like to see developed into a longer scene or a full-length play? • Which presentation do you think is most related to the content/context of the photograph? • … and WHY? • If you know the history/background/story of the photo, share it with the class now. Which group’s presentation was closest to the real context of the image? • Compare and contrast the portrayals of each character in the image. How were they similar? How were they different? • What was one moment from any of the presentations that surprised you? 8. Optional: Repeat the exercise with a different image. You may also wish to swap out the group members to mix things up. 9. At the end of class, each student will complete and submit an exit slip (found below). Kerry Hishon is a director, actor, writer and stage combatant from London, Ontario, Canada. She blogs at www.kerryhishon.com.