T. Daniel Productions

Mime is an art of paradoxes. It speaks in every language without uttering a word. It is the art of movement that springs from immobility. Mime is a modern art, as we know it, yet its roots date back to ancient times.

Mime stems from two primitive instincts of Man: the need to imitate and the need to communicate. We learn by imitation! We learn to talk, to walk and we learn about life through imitation. This makes us natural born mimes.

Mime is so fundamental to the human instinct that almost every culture has produced some form of the Art. Since the Art is so common, it is easy for different peoples to find enjoyment in Mime, as it speaks directly of the human experience in universal truths. By finding the beauty in the movement of these common experiences, Mime can stir the imagination and even touch the soul. Today, this highly artistic art allows us to laugh at our daily activities and at ourselves; to touch the soul as well as tickle the funny bone. Mime finds strength in this diversity.

Over the centuries, Mime has evolved into an art that gives vision to those expressions and ideas of man for which there are no words. One could say that Mime is a play without words, but that would be inadequate. Because with Mime words have no importance, for Mime takes place before words are thought of. If the audience feels the lack of words, Mime would be just an actor without a voice. However, Mime is more than just a silent actor. The mime speaks with the body directly to our inner experiences and emotions.

The Art of Mime is not dependent on another art, not dependent on Music, Painting or Literature or on any other art. Mime depends solely on its own view of how the body moves and how the body conveys the inner state of man. Even though Mime is independent of theatre, Mime is fundamental to Theatre, for without the body and movement of the actor there would be no theatre. This is the providence of Mime.

Mime is often thought to be dependent on Music, as is Dance. This is because Mime and Dance are often thought of as the same art, only with different applications. While both Dance and Mime rely on the same instrument, the body, they are totally different arts and should not be confused with each other. The basic element that separates these two arts is gravity. Mime revels in gravity while dance wishes to escape its bounds. A mime is someone walking towards a goal while the dancer is someone leaping. This simple difference is what ties dance to music while freeing Mime from Music’s hold.

Mime is a lyrical and romantic form of art. There is a musicality in the movement of Mime. As the mime moves through the silent space of the stage, the movements cause a ripple in the air like a stone in water. A whirlwind of music is produced by the rhythm of the moving body in space. When the mime ceases to move, the music fades to silence once again. The music is not of the ear but of the eye; we see the music as we feel the music.

While we are natural mimes in our daily life, Mime becomes an Art only through the artist’s vision, the artist’s highly trained body and the artist’s choice of movement. Children are still natural mimes, as they intuitively know the language of movement. But, since there is no choice in their movement to express the appropriate emotions, their play is not Art.

This same reasoning is why we do not “delight in the works of” street mime. Their mimicry is void of the criteria of Art and meaning. The “wall’ and “rope” have no metaphor in the street and the audience’s marvel at these displays of skill quickly diminish with time. With street mime, the children in the play yard have just grown up and moved to the street corner.

While the technique and concepts of Mime are as rich as any art, there is one technique that is unique to Mime: Attitude. An Attitude is a still pose that expresses an idea. Like a statue that expresses a feeling in its frozen moment, Mime’s Attitude uses its stillness to be just as expressive. The mime finds nuances in the various Attitude poses, which are the key to Mime’s expressiveness. The mime has an advantage over the statue in that the mime can move from one Attitude to another with a succession of Attitudes creating movement. Much like a film, where each frame holds the potential for movement, movement only occurs when the projector and the eye connect. The mime’s Attitudes create movement to the audience’s eye. 

The Attitude is part of a key element of Mime: Immobility. Immobility is not simply standing still in an Attitude. Immobility is mobile immobility as Mr. Decroux so often said. This mobile immobility exits because there is an internal quality that vibrates, a vibration of the muscles that brings definition to the immobility. Movement should be punctuated with immobility so that the internalization of the feeling and Attitude can burst forth.

There are special techniques to help frame and punctuate the movement, to bring out the Attitude and Immobility; such as “Toc”, dividing the body into six parts (the Head, Neck, Chest, Center, Hips and Legs), isolation, triple design, dyno-rhythm and the list goes on. All these techniques have been created to make the body expressive. Absent from this list are the arms and hands. This is because the body is expressive while the arms and hands are used for gestures. These extremities support the efforts of the body and are not important by themselves. The same is true for the face. While society looks to the face for expressions and feelings, especially in television, it is the body that must first express the idea. The face can only echo that which is first seen in the body.

Like all art, Mime has various styles. The style of the 19^th Century is different from the Decroux style of the 20^th Century. Even during the 20^th Century there were various styles. The style that most people are familiar with today is called Objective Mime or sometimes Illusionary Mime, which is the least artistic. This style creates imaginary object like “Walking in Place” or “Leaning”. There are hundreds of these illusions; some are as simplistic as a child’s play while others are very complex. Too often what is seen of Objective Mime is objects shown for their own sake. A better use of this style is for the object to be the catalyst for exploring the soul of man. When the mime uses Objective Mime in this way, the art begins to become a complex art.

To really explore the depths of man’s soul requires an other style, Subjective Mime. Here is where the true art of Mime can be found, for movement creates feelings and images rather than mere objects. Subjective Mime is the study of the State of Man’s Soul and is the exploration of man’s inner thoughts.

Another style of Mime is Corporeal Mime or Abstract Mime. The focus of this style is on complex, stylized movements. At times the movement appears to be very abstract while at other times the movement is very concrete. In ether case it is the movement that becomes the images and ideas of man. It is the beauty of the movement that becomes the key to the understanding of the imagery.

While studying Mime, it is important to keep these styles distinct. On stage, the styles can be blended together to communicate an idea. Often, a good, well-trained mime will use all three styles to make the performance exciting and interesting to the audience, as it should be.

Today, Mime is the child of silence, the golden child of the precious commodity of silence. It is in this silence that Mime gives a vision to the expressions of man for which there are no words. When a mime presents a work, it is a nonverbal expression of man’s innermost feelings. It is the state of man’s soul that the mime can express best. Only through extensive technique and training is the mime able to bring life to these inner thoughts. From a very basic instinct, the need to imitate and communicate, Mime has grown into an Art that expresses man’s feelings in space, into an Art that gives a “voice” to man’s ideas that exists before words are formed. These fundamental elements of the human condition are the subject and material of Mime, these are the very essence of Mime, and these are the special providence of the Art of Mime. This is the Art of Mime.