Mime Time

During an episode of Family Guy yesterday I was interested in a certain segment of the show. A mime did the weather, indicating that it would be a cold and windy day using acting rather than words. This piqued my curiosity of mimes, and their origins. Today we will look at the origin of mimes and what they are good for.

The following is an excerpt from http://www.wikipedia.org on mimes.

A Mime artist is someone who uses mime as a theatrical medium or as a performance art. In earlier times, in English, such a performer was referred to
as a mummer.

The Roman Pantomimus was a spectacular kind of play in which the actor was confined to gesticulating and dancing, sometimes with a behind-the-scenes chorus providing music and song.

Modern mime is a branch of theatre in which the performer usually uses no voice but instead performs using spacial and corporeal movement, full-body physical expressions, body language and gesture, often with little or no theatrical props. It is often, but not always, done in white face and the movements and expressions are heightened for greater effect. Movement theatre is a related branch of theatre which merges elements of mime with that of modern dance. Amateur mime artists often use a very limited number of routines from the repertoire of mime artist Marcel Marceau, such as 'walking against the wind', 'peeling a banana', and 'pretending to be in an invisible box'.

So we can see that even the ancient Roman civilization liked it's mimes, also referring to them as pantomimus (or pantomimes). A key point to take from this is that your typical mime acting that you might be familiar with, such as 'pretending to be in an invisible box', is just the tip of the ice berg! It appears that there are more advance miming techniques that are being used by mimes all over the world. As well, the white-painted face is not always a requisite, but is certainly the norm.

To complete our education on mimes, let us take a look at how you too can join this fascinating world of miming. The following before and after images show one such person's transformation from an "ordinary, every-day, Albert" to "Mime Albert" (image courtesy of Travis). Pay special notice to the inclusion of a white face paint, gloves, and French beret. The painted tear is optional, all depends on if you are a "sad mime" or a "happy mime".

Before (left) and After (right)