Works of art, book illustrations and photographs can provide powerful inspiration for drama activities. Images can easily be brought to life through freeze frames, thought tracking and improvisation to create a 3D Living Picture.
Choose an image that depicts a range of characters. The picture should be big enough to be seen by the whole group – ideally projected on to the wall – or a large poster displayed where everyone can talk about it together. Click the images below to see a full size view.
Children’s Games by Pieter Bruegel (1560)
Children’s Games is an oil-on-panel by Flemish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, painted in 1560 (Location: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). At least 80 games have been identified.
Work by Ford Madox Brown (1852-1865)
Ford Madox Brown painted ‘Work’ between 1852 and 1865. The painting is of a lively street scene in Victorian Hampstead, London and shows a group of navvies (road-diggers) hard at work as well as a spectrum of social classes ranging from the homeless and the unemployed to a chickweed-seller, an MP and political protestors.
Going to Work by L.S. Lowry (1943)
Going to Work by L.S. Lowry. Factory workers going to work at the Mather & Platt, Manchester, in the white industrial haze. Painted 1943 and displayed in the Imperial War Museum.
Crowd#9 (Sunset 5) 2013
Crowd#9(Sunset-5), 2013, from the series Face in the Crowd by Los Angeles photographer and filmmaker Alex Prager (b. 1979). Her work consists of photographs and films whose common denominator is a meticulously crafted mise-en-scène.
Examine the picture with the participants, highlighting any issues you want to discuss such as relationships between the characters and where the picture is set. Explain that the group is going to bring the picture to life by making a three-dimensional tableau. Invite the participants to look carefully at the picture and to place themselves in the space as one of the characters. As they enter they should say who they are and make a freeze frame of their chosen character as accurately as possible.
When you have enough people to represent all (or most of) the characters, you can move onto thought tracking. Walk amongst the characters, tapping them on the shoulder one by one to hear their thoughts. When you have heard them all, explain that the picture will come to life for a few moments when you clap your hands. If it is a complex picture you can use spotlighting to find out what is happening in different parts of the tableau. As you walk around the group, invite each sub-group of characters to come to life and be heard. As you move away, they should freeze back into a tableau.
Explore this technique in our online course The Inspiring Drama Teacher.
Examples of Artists
Hieronymus Bosch
Pieter Brueghel the Elder
William Hogarth
L. S. Lowry
Ford Madox-Brown
Rembrandt
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Diego Rivera
Jan Steen
Adolphe Valette
Photographers
Cartier-Bresson
Alex Prager
Illustrators
Martin Handford (Where’s Wally)
