The Tableaux: Jack And The Beanstalk

The tableaux assignment was overall, a great experience for me to meet new people and get to know more about the different forms of drama! Firstly, our group’s biggest challenge in creating our tableaux was using the resources that we had. I say this because our story was “Jack and the Beanstalk,” a story which needs a lot of props to be able to be understood. The props that were needed were: a small sack and a big bag (or alternatively: some yellow scraps – to symbolize riches and gold). It would be hard to understand the play without these two significant props unless the audience were given the title as to which the story is known by all and would be easily understood. To overcome this challenge we decided to use people instead of props.

Firstly, I didn’t like my group’s transitions because everyone was all over the place. Many people didn’t know where to go and had to be directed in between scenes (during transition time). I believe this definitely had a negative impact on the audience because the transitions weren’t smooth which might have thrown off the audience. Secondly, my group could have held their freeze with more focus. I base my criticism off of the last scene when the music started playing; most of the actors (Jack and the giant) on stage started to laugh and didn’t hold their freeze. This is another factor that might not have been appealing to the audience who was trying to understand what was going on. The sudden outburst of emotions definitely put the audience out of the mood that the tableaux was meant to be in. It further, destroyed the tension in the moment (not necessarily tension but many other emotions) as many of the emotions running through the actors were overpowered by the laughter, which added a comical sense to the whole performance. Moreover, if I were (able) to direct my group, I would definitely have called “everyone” to the rehearsal instead of letting them wander off to other groups and not pay attention which would have resolved the problem with the transitions. Next, I would have practiced the last scene multiple times until my group stopped laughing and got over the comedy. This would have prevented the problem with the focus and the emotions at the