Tableaux vivants (or living images) used to be a popular practice in medieval times, and revived in the 19th century, probably influenced by the advent of photography. The practice entails a group of actors standing still, as an intersection between theatre and still image. It has been used as an entertainment in aristocratic courts where rich people recreated famous paintings, all the way to Bertold Brecht’s dialectical theatre and one of his “alienation” techniques: he would freeze the action on stage in order for a narrator or a character to break a fourth wall, or to allow for a pause for audience in especially important moments on stage. We have taken the practice from the arsenal of Augusto Boal and his Theatre of the Oppressed. He developed a whole technique based on the living images called “image theatre”, and the context that he developed it in was precisely the multilingual context of working with different linguistic groups in South America – this was a way to allow communication about important topics of oppression and resistance beyond verbal language. In the context of community organising images can be best used as a part of the listening campaign – where you can use the technique to understand better and open conversation about a specific topic.
You will need:
This technique is quite versatile, and it doesn’t require any material preparation other than large enough space
Time:
Allow for minimally half an hour for the activity.
Step-by-step
1 – Create a theatre-like space (allowing for a “stage” – a large enough space for a group of five to seven people in one end of the room and the chairs facing it as audience)
2 – At the beginning everyone stands or sits in the audience. Explain the rules to the group. There will be a topic (for example family, school, local council, housing, work etc). A first person should enter the stage and make a statue with their body that is an association to that particular topic. They can also use props and clothing, whatever they find in the room.
3 – The second person enters the stage, and they build upon the topic and the already existing statute
4 – Repeat the step 3 until there is somewhere between three and seven or eight people in the image.
5 – Ask the rest of the group what they see in the image, what are the things they recognise from their realities, do they like it or they find it problematic etc.
Tips
Tableaux can be useful as an entry point to specific questions about a certain topic, but they can be taken even further. Once you create an image that the group agrees that shows a problem in the community, you can ask the group to rearrange the image in order to show how things could be better. Then discussion can be centred around how different the two images are? Which are the steps needed? Where should we start?
This tool can also be used to perform evaluation – how did the group feel at the beginning, how at the end? How does a group see an issue in the beginning, how after the discussion, etc.