In this "Promising Practice" article, we describe rationales and processes of using a tableau theater model for student engagement in a developmental education literacy course. Tableau theater is an instructional technique in which students physically reenact moments in texts they read. Asher's (1969) total physical response (TPR), and constructivist and theories of embodied literacies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; New London Group, 1996) informed the development of this technique. Repeated use of this instructional model in a variety of class contexts and with different texts and instructors demonstrated the value of using classroom time to allow students to engage physically with the text and create their own meaning, thus putting them in control of building their own academic identities.