Body

Objective

Understand the principles of improvisation through tableaux.

Step 1: Dramatic elements

The learners decide on one event in the life of the person they interviewed that they want to focus on. They must write down the following:

The Pyramid Story Structure of that event.
The characters: These are the people that the person you interviewed mentioned.
The setting: Where the action of the play takes place. This can be more than one place. Remind the learners that the setting is where the events in the person’s life took place, and not where they interviewed the person.

Step 2: Frozen image

In groups, the learners create three frozen images:

To guide the learners in creating their three structured tableaux, instruct that:

One learner starts in the middle and makes a frozen position that forms part of the scene.
Then everyone else helps them complete the movement, going one at a time into the tableaux when someone claps.

Step 3:Add dialogue

Now the learners each create one line of dialogue in each frozen image.

Step 4:

The learners now use Steps 1-3 to create a short scene about an event from the story of the person they interviewed.

Step 5:

Learners demonstrate the scenes to the class.

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