ALEX Learning Activity

  

Tableaux, the Instagram of Theatre

A Learning Activity is a strategy a teacher chooses to actively engage students in learning a concept or skill using a digital tool/resource.

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  This learning activity provided by:  
Author: Jennifer Salvant
System:Hoover City
School:Robert F Bumpus Middle School
  General Activity Information  
Activity ID: 1736
Title:
Tableaux, the Instagram of Theatre
Digital Tool/Resource:
Drama Tableau Project
Web Address – URL:
Overview:

Through this activity, the students will explore and create a tableau. Students will identify solutions to staging challenges by using levels and physical connections. 

This activity was created as a result of the Arts COS Resource Development Summit.
  Associated Standards and Objectives  
Content Standard(s):
Arts Education
ARTS (2017)
Grade: 6
Theatre
1) Identify possible solutions to staging challenges in a drama/theatre work.

Unpacked Content
Artistic Process: Creating
Anchor Standards:
Anchor Standard 1: Generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work.
Process Components: Envision, Conceptualize
Essential Questions:
EU: Theatre Artists rely on intuition, curiosity and critical inquiry.
EQ: What happens when Theatre artists use their imagination and/or learned theatre skills while engaging in creative exploration and inquiry?
Concepts & Vocabulary:
Vocal
Movement
Characterization

Skills Assessed
  • Sixth graders work collaboratively to plan a dramatization, take part in its production, and discuss the results. They project movement and improvise dialogue in dramas. No prop, sets, or costumes used at this point.
  • The focus for this age group is to expand body awareness and sensory perceptions. Students incorporate their life experiences into dramatic play by creating environments, analyzing characters, and inventing actions to depict chosen life experiences.
Skill Examples:
Ways to Explore Imagination: Ways to Create Body Movement with Storytelling:
  • Students can incorporate group storytelling with using the concept of a living pop-up book. Students work in groups of three to five to write an original story and are prepared to act it out with the use of the concept of the Pop Up Book. See the link below:
  • http://www.bbbpress.com/2015/01/drama-game-pop-up-book/
Way to Explore Artistic Choices:
  • For the idea to create their own understanding and opinion of artistic choices, students view live and recorded presentations, identifying dramatic elements such as plot, dialogue, movement, set, costume, and props. Students demonstrate, describe, and illustrate, with examples from the performance(s), a variety of ways a specific character communicates with the audience. Students should be able to articulate these opinions in oral and written form. Below is a great link to comparing acting choices in theatre vs. film. This is a great starting point:
  • https://www.theatrefolk.com/blog/stage-vs-screen-a-comparison-of-acting-techniques/
Learning Objectives:

Students will identify possible solutions to staging challenges as they explore and create tableaux. Students will use levels and physical connections to stage four tableaux and present them to their class.
  Strategies, Preparations and Variations  
Phase:
During/Explore/Explain
Activity:

When you are ready to begin, explain that you will be experimenting with some tableaux today and show them the difference between the plural and singular on the board. Tell them not to be alarmed by this French term. Explain further that they can simply think of a tableau as the "instagram" of theatre.

List and expound on some examples of when a director may use a tableau:

Foreshadowing

An aside

Narration

The end or beginning of a dance/musical number

 

Take the time to have volunteers come up and form a tableau. Give them an emotion to experiment with, for example, sad.

Stress the importance of staying still. This is not charades.

Explore the idea of having the students connect physically during the tableau.

For example, students must connect using their elbows or shoes must be touching in some way.

Ask the students watching: "How does this change the tableau?"

Explore levels in the tableau.

Have the students use different levels.

Ask the students watching: "How does this change the tableau?"

Explain that levels and connections (or choosing not to connect) can make tableaux more visually interesting for an audience.

Finally, hand out cards that fit four different categories:

occupation, emotion, situation, and location.

Give each group one card from each category. Have them create a tableau for each card.

The following day, or if you have time to complete the lesson in one day, have the groups come back to their seats. Each group, in front of the other groups, will form their tableau in order: emotion, occupation, situation, and environment. Give the groups that are seated the opportunity to guess what was on their card. Give each team/group a point as they guess. This will make the students more engaged as they are competing for points.

 
Assessment Strategies:

Informal, Formative Assessment:

Explore levels in the tableau. Have the students use different levels. Ask the students watching: "How does this change the tableau?"

Explore the idea of having the students connect physically during the tableau. For example, students must connect using their elbows or shoes must be touching in some way. Ask the students watching: "How does this change the tableau?"

Formal Assessment:

Include this question on an exit slip, "Name one instance when a director might choose to use a tableau?"

Possible Answers:

foreshadowing, an aside, narration, the end or beginning of a dance/musical number
Advanced Preparation:

Prior to your class, write the plural and singular term Tableau and Tableaux on the board.

Notecards with a different tableau on each card. (These could be laminated for future use)

Your class roster divided into groups of 4-6 students per group.

 

 

 
Variation Tips (optional):

Extensions:

Take photographs of your class’s tableaux. Publish them digitally or print them. Further the students' sense of community by creating a display of their tableaux.

Use vocabulary words to generate the tableaux.
Notes or Recommendations (optional):

Possible emotions: fear, sadness, happiness, love

Possible occupations: President, mechanic, doctor, teacher

Possible locations: the beach, arctic, hallway at school, forest

Possible situations: Family portrait, football game, newborn at the hospital, gameshow
  Keywords and Search Tags  
Keywords and Search Tags: