Tableau
Etymology
From French "tableau," "picture," from Old French tablel, a diminutive of table, from Latin tabula, "board, tablet, painting." The word for the painted board came to mean the picture on it, then any pictorial arrangement. The phrase tableau vivant, "living picture," named the parlor game of posing to recreate famous scenes.
noun · /ta-BLOH/
A striking, composed grouping of figures held as if in a picture.
What it names
The frozen stage moment when actors hold a pose to fix an image in the audience’s mind — a word for arranged stillness meant to be read like a painting.
Example
The play ends on a silent tableau: the family frozen around the dinner table, no one quite looking at anyone else.
Related idea
A tableau is a composed, held grouping; a diorama is a three-dimensional scene built in miniature or full scale to be viewed as a whole.