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Mime artist

Person who uses mime as a theatrical medium or performance art

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  • 3 chapters
Mime artists Jean and Brigitte Soubeyran in the play "In the Circus"
Ronald · CC BY-SA 1.0

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History

Ancient Greece and Rome

The performance of mime originates at its earliest in Ancient Greece; the name is taken from a single masked dancer called Pantomimus, although performances were not necessarily silent. The first recorded mime was Telestēs in the play Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus. Tragic mime was developed by Puladēs of Kilikia; comic mime was developed by Bathullos of Alexandria. Mime (mimus) was an aspect of Roman theatre from its earliest times, paralleling the Atellan farce in its improvisation (if without the latter's stock characters). It gradually began to replace the Atellanae as interludes [embolium] or afterpieces (exodium on the main theatre stages; became the sole dramatic event at the Floralia in the second century BC; and in the following century received technical advances at the hands of Publilius Syrus and Decimus Laberius, who used expressions, situations and titles of Plautus' comedies. Under the Roman Empire mime became the predominant Roman drama, but experienced mixed fortunes under various emperors. Trajan banished mime artists; Caligula favored them; Marcus Aurelius made them priests of Apollo. Nero himself acted as a mime. The mime was distinguished from other dramas by its absence of masks, and by the presence of female as well as male performers. A mime called the archimime (archimimus) would perform as a part of Roman funeral processions by miming the deeds of the deceased. Mime stock characters included the stooge or stupidus, the gigolo, and cultus adulter in the mimus zelotypi or jealous mime.

Medieval Europe

In medieval Europe, early forms of mime such as mummer's plays and later dumbshows evolved.

France

In early nineteenth-century Paris, Jean-Gaspard Deburau solidified the many attributes that have come to be known in modern times—the silent figure in whiteface. Jacques Copeau, strongly influenced by commedia dell'arte and Japanese Noh theatre, used masks in the training of his actors. His pupil Étienne Decroux was highly influenced by this, started exploring and developing the possibilities of mime, and developed corporeal mime into a highly sculptural form, taking it outside the realms of naturalism. Jacques Lecoq contributed significantly to the development of mime and physical theatre with his training methods. As a result of this, the practice of mime has been included in the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage elements in France since 2017.

Asian theatre

Classical Indian musical theatre is a group of theatrical forms in which the performer presents a narrative via stylized gesture, an array of hand positions, and miming to play different characters, actions, and landscapes. Recitation, music, and even percussive footwork sometimes accompany the performance. The Natya Shastra, an ancient treatise on theatre by Bharata Muni, mentions silent performance, or mukabhinaya. In Kathakali, stories from Indian epics are told with facial expressions, hand signals and body motions. Performances are accompanied by songs narrating the story while the actors act out the scene, followed by actor detailing without background support of narrative song.. The Japanese Noh tradition has greatly influenced many contemporary mime and theatre practitioners including Jacques Copeau and Jacques Lecoq because of its use of mask work and highly physical performance style. Butoh, though often referred to as a dance form, has been adopted by various theatre practitioners as well.

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