Education Resources
THEATRE VISIT FOLLOW-UP - Drama Pictures: Tableaux KS 1&2 curriculum links: links
English – Listening, Drama / Physical Education
Key Vocabulary: Vocabulary
Tableaux / images / expressions / body language / motionless
To encourage pupils to: • Respond imaginatively to different scenes and characters in the story • Gain greater awareness of their body language and facial expressions • Make decisions as a group and support each other • Build on their understanding of the characters and scenes in the play Introduction Tableaux can be used either in response to or to provoke story telling. The exercise is great to get children working together as a team. Tableaux can be used to imaginatively recreate aspects of stories of all kinds using different stimuli including poems, historical facts, newspaper headlines or music. Method and Organisation You will need a fairly large space for this, school hall for example. Put the class into smaller groups of no less than 4 or 5. Explain to the group that they will be creating still pictures / living photographs or tableaux of scenes from The Pied Piper. To begin the exercise and introduce the concept of tableaux, you could start by giving the groups a scene to show as a group, for example: birthday, cinema, seaside, shop. In their groups, ask the pupils to think of an action or pose to illustrate a part of the scene and when all groups seem to have something, tell them all to “freeze!” and hold their pose. You can ‘spotlight’ each group, having a look at each one in turn, so that they can enjoy each other’s still pictures and generate some mutual support. You can then introduce scenes from The Pied Piper for the groups to recreate and ask the children to guess which ones they are presented with. Pupils usually respond to the suggestions instinctively and can come up with great scenes without much discussion between them. As such it can be a great activity to help everyone feel included, not just those with the most confidence. Alternatively you could work with the whole class and build up the scene asking one person at a time to take the shape of any person, creature or object that they imagine may be part of the scene.
Education Resources Once the first person has taken a pose, the second can add to the picture by assuming the shape of another person, creature or object that interacts with the first. Once each child is in position the scene is held for a few moments for others to enjoy and discuss what they can see. Extended Activities • Tableaux pictures could be ‘brought to life’ - from the still pose, the group then act the scene out with voice and movement • Encourage an active audience for the still pictures by asking the viewers to describe things in the picture that are unseen, smells, sounds, colours or costumes