Actors as scenery?

MACBETH shall never vanquish'd be until
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill
Shall come against him.

But perhaps that's more an instance of actors as characters masquerading as scenery.

I'm not sure what you are asking. Harold Prince was famous for using actors on stage throughout his musicals, but they were usually playing people (or ghosts in FOLLIES), not literally walls and furniture. It gave his work a look of Realism that was unusual for musicals in the 60s and 70s. (And it may have originated with Robbins or somebody. I could be giving Prince credit for something he didn't invent, but merely used a lot.)

The tradition of musical theater characters having extensive meetings where they are all alone in a public place (some stagings of "If I Loved You" for example) was always rather artificial.

As for using actors to actually play furniture and set pieces, I know Fosse did some of that in PIPPIN and maybe even CHICAGO, but I don't know if I'd call that his "style". A lot of the shows (PIPPIN, GODSPELL, others) that were influenced by college productions that were in turn influenced by improv exercises (and I don't mean the GROUNDLINGS) did things where bodies came to represent inanimate objects. Call it the "hippy" influence.

Ever hear of opera supernumeraries?

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Ramon Delgado's The Little Toy Dog, is a very short one act that is written with the chorus or ensemble used in this way. They are the trees in the forest and as the male and female lead stroll through the forest, they comment. they create the wind etc.

The male lead goes to university, off to war, into the work place, and in each the chorus creates the environment, as walls, chairs, blackboards. sometimes they are soldiers, other times they're inanimate.

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The original staging of "The Robber Bridegroom" used the ensemble actors as scenery, animals, etc. Most of them stayed on stage for the entire show.

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I just did The Odyssey translation by Richard Fitzgerald we'd use people to become ships & planks of wood, and people as animals ie. sheep and wolves and lions it was really fun to use people instead of set pieces & worked with the show's dance background that we incorporated

This summer's production of Into the Woods at the Delacorte.

In English, tableaus (or in French, tableaux, I believe).

Only because you asked. Not trying to be snarky.

(ETA looked it up: the British use the French spelling, tableaux, and that is technically correct in American English as well; but in the U.S., tableaus is more common.)

Updated On: 3/10/12 at 05:18 PM

NICHOLAS NICKLEBY attempted to represent everything in the book onstage, including descriptive passages. I especially recall a description of a row of houses which were represented by actors standing in a row.

I saw a production of Once on This Island where ensemble members played the tree. It was kind of lame. They just stood there and held branches while little Ti Moune sat on one of their shoulders.

I'm pretty sure the script of OOTI indicates that the tree is supposed to be played by one or two actors, with Little Ti Moune on their shoulders.