DRAMA PICTURES - TABLEAUX Year Group/Key Stage
KS 1 & 2, Year Groups 1 - 6
Curriculum Links
English – Listening, Drama / Physical Education
Length of Session
Class session
Key Vocabulary
Tableaux / images / expressions / still / motionless /
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.
Lesson Aims To encourage pupils to •
Respond imaginatively to different scenes and characters in the story
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Use clarity in their physical body language and facial expressions
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Make decisions as a group and support each other
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Build on their understanding of the characters and scenes in the play
Activities Put the class/group into smaller groups of no less than 4 or 5. Explain to the group that they will be creating still pictures or tableaux of scenes from The Voyages of Sinbad. To begin the exercise and introduce the concept of tableaux, you could start by giving each group a word to illustrate as a group, for example birthday, school, seaside, shop. The groups sit in a horizontal line facing an open space which is the performance space. The scene is built up one person at a time so ask the group to nominate a different starting person each time. One by one each pupil takes the shape of any person, creature or object that they imagine may be part of the scene. Once the first person has frozen the second may enter the space and add to the picture by assuming the shape of another person, creature or object. Once each child is in position they must not move again unless to rest briefly as it may take some children longer to settle in their position. Finally the scene is held for a few moments for other groups to enjoy and discuss what they can see. Introduce scenes from The Voyages of Sinbad for the groups to recreate and ask the children to guess which ones they are presented with. Examples of these are the deck of the ship, inside the whale, the Kasbah, the genie emerging from the ring, playing grandmother’s footsteps with the giant or the crew discovering the island is moving.
Method and Organisation You will need a hall space for this. The session could be done with the whole class rather than small groups with the teacher nominating children to encourage them to take an active role or when they volunteer. The exercise is best played out in silence to allow the children to think creatively of their own ideas for the scene.
Extended Activities •
Tableaux pictures could be ‘brought to life’ with sound and movement to extend the scene
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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
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You could add different levels to the scene using chairs, tables, benches or mats