Today in class, we did an activity called a tableau vivant with “Julius Caesar”, where groups had to act out scenes, but couldn’t move. “Tableau vivant”, a French phrase, looks like it would mean “live tablet” from previous experiences with other languages,
but it literally translates to English as “live painting”. This would make sense as a painting has figures in it, but they are stationary. A “dead” painting can be made a live painting by putting live figures in replacement of 2 dimensional ones from canvas. This concept of having boundaries of what an actor could use to perform in this way reminded me of a mime, in that they cannot escape their imaginary boundaries. However, a mime is able to move, making it a complete opposite to the stationary tableau actor.
One thing that I found online that had roots in tableau vivant was the mannequin challenge. People in this challenge would freeze doing what ever they were doing and wouldn’t move, showing what is going on at the time for the person filming the scene. While the founders of the movement were likely unaware of this theatrical style, it still had many similarities that were seen used by individual athletes, their teams, celebrities, music artists, activists, and even politicians. While there is an argument that musicians could have previous theatrical experience, it is unlikely that most of these groups have any to speak of. This example gave me a more commonplace example of this theatrical style to give a better understanding of this activity.
