Mime the Gap E-Book

Richard Knight

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Crowood Theatre Companions
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 263

Beschreibung

Mime the Gap: Techniques in Mime and Movement explores the physicality of movement in storytelling, offering new ideas about acting and performance, whilst encouraging a contemporary resurgence of this traditional performance art. With detailed, step-by-step instructions of basic to advanced mime illusions, the book addresses the key areas of physicality, including when to move and when not to move, making the invisible 'visible' and the fundamental principles of physical articulation. Additional topics include how to use the elements of Fire, Earth, Water and Air for physical characterization; techniques for performing classic mime routines, such as the Glass Box and the Moonwalk; how to mime with props and objects, both visible and invisible; using breath, posture and gesture to enhance performance and perceptions, and finally, creating and producing an authentic performance. Offering numerous exercises suitable for solo or group work, this new book will help you to explore and develop your physicality and build an awareness of how to apply it to a performance.A practical guide to mime - a traditional performance art which is having a resurgence.Addresses the key areas of physicality including when to move and when not to move; making the invisible 'visible'; principles of physical articulation and much, much more.A valuable guide for acting students, mime artists and anyone looking to increase personal confidence and presentation skills.Gives detailed step-by-step instructions of basic to advanced mime illusions.Superbly illustrated with 181 colour photographs.Richard Knight has over thirty years experience of performing, directing and teaching in the theatre, film and television industry.

Leseprobe

Mime the Gap

TECHNIQUES IN MIME AND MOVEMENT

Richard Knight

THE CROWOOD PRESS

DEDICATION

To Stuart Luis. A fabulous mime artist, who was a great performer, from whom I learnt so much, and who was a good friend.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Photos taken by Richard Knight and Ellie Cummings

Mime performers in photos: Richard Knight and Ellie Cummings

Book edited by Ellie Cummings

History chapter written by Ellie Cummings

First published in 2018 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2018

© Richard Knight 2018

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of thistext may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 464 3

CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

1THE HISTORY OF MIME

2BASIC MIME TECHNIQUES

3THE ELEMENTS

4POSTURE AND GESTURE

5THE BREATH

6LEVELS OF TENSION

7MIME ILLUSIONS

8TEACHING MIME

9CREATING A MIME PERFORMANCE

10USING MIME IN EVERYDAY LIFE

11MIME AND BEYOND

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND FURTHER READING

INDEX

PREFACE

The Universe had no words in its evolution. It was created with movement. Atoms collided and merged to form existence as we know it. They did not speak to each other first to see if the other atom minded a bit of a bump before they created something new! Mime is movement. And movement is the story of mime. In stillness there is movement. Everything moves. Stillness does not mean doing nothing, stillness is active and alive, a vibration that resonates. Stories are born from movement. A story is the beginning, the middle and the end. The journey from one movement to another, to another.

This book is the result of my journey discovering and learning mime, and the years I have had teaching it in all different classrooms with all different people. I’ve had the privilege to perform and teach mime for stage and screen, and continue to learn things about acting, movement and presence from my students and my experiences.

I have taught and performed mime for thirty-five years. Along the way I have worked on prime-time television shows, from Bollywood to Hollywood, drama schools, Cambridge and Oxford universities, the National Theatre, the Royal College of Music, the Royal College of Art and the Royal Shakespeare Company. I have performed and taught in the poorest housing estates, with the physically and mentally handicapped, the Deaf Society, with partially blind people and amateur drama societies. I have worked with five- to eighty-five-year-olds, magicians, opera singers, speech therapists, doctors, CEOs, accountants and scientists. People have come to a mime class because they wanted to improve their personal confidence or their presentation skills, or perhaps their partner ‘bought’ the class as a different kind of birthday present, or drama students wanted to discover a new skill.

Some people, both professional artists and laymen, turn their noses up at mime: ‘Mime artists are scary!’, ‘I hate mime!’, ‘Mime is not beautiful,’ ‘Mime is not real theatre’ they say. Some people think that the mime popularized by Marcel Marceau is redundant, that it is a limited art form. Perhaps it is outdated, having been overtaken by performance that is ‘socially and politically engaging’. Some people think that a mime show cannot be these things.

Other people can be intrigued by us silent artists: ‘Isn’t it hard not to speak for so long?’, ‘Haha! Look, I’m having a conversation with a mime artist!’, ‘Can you show me trapped in the glass box?’ they say.

Everyone is a born mime artist, and there is no escaping it. Mimicry and mime can be both the same and different things. I am not going to explain here the arguments I have come across to suggest that mime is not mimicry, and vice versa. For the purposes of my point, the copying of posture, gesture and facial expressions is part of our DNA throughout our lives. Families inherit each other’s idiosyncrasies: that might be a lopsided smile, a certain way of blowing your nose, or an unconscious tic. The mimicry of the people around us literally shapes who we are. The baby watches, absorbs and mimics movement, shapes and expressions in its environment. This is how we all begin to form our brain, and learn about being human.

Jacques Lecoq, the great physical theatre teacher, wrote a book called Everything Moves. For me, it is movement that causes all things to come into being: the Big Bang, the birth of stars, planets, oceans, valleys. A thought requires movement, the voice needs to sit on the motion of the breath, all energy, vibrations and frequency are movement. Mime and movement are one. To communicate on any level always takes movement. Movement is so entrenched in our lives that we take it for granted and hardly notice it. The ‘pen is mightier than the sword’, but ‘actions speak louder than words’.

The word ‘actor’ really means to be the ‘Great Pretender’! Acting isn’t about displaying real emotions, it’s about playing and sharing the biggest game of them all. I like to say we are ‘players’ who play in the playhouse, performing: this is our game and the big lie that we play to the audience for them to enjoy. The audience goes to the theatre to see the play, so they too can play along and share in this game with the actors. The audience wants to go on a journey into an imaginary, wonderful world, to dream and be moved by what they see and experience.

This book covers all the things I wanted to know about mime, but could never find in a book. So I had to write one. These questions have taken me on a very long journey throughout my career: so often I thought if I could only find a book that could help me! I did find some mime books. A lot of books about mime focus on technique and history. Mime may be featured in general movements books and is mentioned by Jacques Lecoq, Etienne Decroux and Annette Lust – but I’ve always wanted to know more. I wanted to find that one book that was simple, easy to read, practical, and would provide the solutions to all the burning questions I wanted answers to. So this is my attempt at writing that book I wanted to read in my career as a mime artist, performer and actor. I hope you find it informative and inspiring.

I was liberated from stammering and being dyslexic by becoming a mime artist. The applications of mime are varied and numerous, and I look forward to the day when mime takes a lead role on the world’s stage once again.

INTRODUCTION

Our prehistoric ancestors were constantly moving to survive. They used gesture and posture to communicate, and their physical language often mimicked the world and creatures around them. They used sound first, and grew to form words that described the images they saw around them, their feelings, their needs and their relationships. Movement is a fundamental and universal requirement for healthy and sane humans.

Actors are trained to become neutral in their bodies and expressions so they can be part of an anonymous chorus, or can mould themselves into any other character. For the average person, we often unconsciously carry the habits of our ancestors.

Children are very connected to their bodies. They are always engaging with what is around them, and express themselves physically. Their physical expression is their strongest way of communicating when they are very young, and it slowly tapers off as they learn language and how to ‘behave themselves’ in a socially acceptable way. In the first year of secondary school it is unlikely that an eleven-year-old will hide behind a teacher to express their shyness of the other children around them. This would be seen as ‘childish’ behaviour, and by this time in our life we have generally found and been taught ways to handle insecurities. As we ‘grow up’ we may become closed off and defensive. We get body conscious, and keep our heads down looking at computers or mobile devices.

In the Western world most people are so disconnected from their bodies that they have become physically nondescript and inexpressive. We are very used to taking ourselves out of ourselves. We drink alcohol, we smoke cigarettes, we watch films, we turn to spirituality, we spend our time using social media. Most people actively disassociate themselves from their body, and this affects our health, our wellbeing, our personal responsibility and our acting! If we are blocked with connecting to a part of ourselves, how are we going to demonstrate the sensuality or violence that one of our characters demands that we play? The faster that technology connects us to everyone and everything, the less we need to move or go anywhere. We can do everything online, sitting in the comfort of our own homes. Nevertheless we are sociable animals, and are made to move, and to read the physical signals of the people around us, and we love to share our stories and our time.

This separation from the body does not occur within all cultures: it is predominantly a Western concern, and even then it is not spread equally through the Western world. Some are much more connected to their physicality than others. The Australians, for example, seem to have a natural affinity for exploring movement. Technology has some part to play in this, but our psychology also affects how much we sit inside our own minds and bodies comfortably.

Mime is not mimicry alone. It is about physical expression and the body’s motion within space so it can be used for story-telling. People express themselves through their movements all the time, the only reprieve being when they are in deep sleep. The interest in the ability to interpret this unconscious expression is prolific – one only needs to look on library bookshelves at the numerous volumes by ‘body language’ experts to see that people want to tap into the power of understanding our physical expression. These books discuss ways to use the body to trick others or to read other people’s true feelings beneath the words they use. They are technical manuals on the body. Each body and each brain is utterly unique. If someone crosses their arms they can be labelled as being defensive. However, what if they are just cold? Or they have a stomach ache? Or they are mirroring you? Or they don’t know what to do with their hands? Maybe they are unconsciously hiding their stomach because they think it is big?

There are some things that help in body language awareness, but it doesn’t always account for the fact that people act differently at different times in the day, month, year or even in the moment. It’s important to be aware of a person’s energy level in that time slot, before making a judgement based on their body language alone.

Mime is its own universal language: physical story-telling. We take words for granted, and place so much importance on communicating with vocabulary that we have become disconnected from our bodies. We have become talking heads, detached and disengaged from our physical selves. Ironically, between 55 and 80 per cent of all communication is actually physical. When we talk to someone we look at them. When we go and hear someone give a speech we look at them. We go to a concert so we can see the musicians play. We go to see a film or a play, not to sit and listen.

Out of the five senses that we are born with, 80 per cent of the information that we absorb is visual. That’s a lot of visual information that we are processing on a daily basis. Yet there remains a very heavy word- and text-based culture in many drama schools and in Western culture. Physicality, movement and mime is often a minor course, like a tacked-on after-thought to actor training. You can have the best spoken and most verbally articulate actor on stage, but if they are physically inexpressive, the audience will not warm to them. If there is nothing to see on stage but well-speaking actors, why go and see them in the first place? You might as well stay at home, save some money and listen to a radio play.

Sadly, much of theatre today is exactly that: people on stage with well-spoken voices who move or stand awkwardly. Imagine an actor on stage trying to convince us that he is the strong, victorious King of Denmark: his words tell us he is strong, but his body is slumped forwards, his head is pointed towards the floor, and he drags his feet when he walks. So we don’t really believe him. Very quickly we feel we have been cheated, and we might have quiet thoughts that we want our money back, or that we’d sneak away from the theatre during the interval if we were that kind of person. The best moments seen on stage and in film come from how well the actors carry the story and the character through their actions and physicality.

Voice and text are very important, but combined they only make up 20 per cent of what we understand from watching a show. A story can be understood even if it is in a foreign language, simply by the gestures, postures and facial expressions of the actors. Take away the action and it’s unlikely you will understand a story in a foreign language, no matter how good an actor’s voice is or how well they articulate! You can take away the voice and text and tell a story, but you can’t take away the body and speech.

What is mime in performance? It is story-telling using the body as the sole form of expression. The three things we use with the body to tell stories are posture, gesture and facial expressions. For example, a hungry old man walks slowly down the road: we use posture to show he is old, he rubs his tummy to show he is hungry (gesture), and he is sad because he is going to eat his meal alone (facial expression). It is a simple story, which needs to be told simply. A mime doesn’t need an old man’s costume, because the character is created using his/her movements. A mime may be wearing plain black clothes, with or without white-face makeup, and this will be enough to convey the character and story of this little tale.

White-face makeup is a mask that can exaggerate a mime’s facial expressions. It was originally designed for the big theatres and outdoor performances in the old days of Pierrot. Makeup can help exaggerate the facial expressions over a great distance, but it isn’t necessary. An expert mime can play all emotions, stories and characters at any time simply by isolating their posture, gesture, facial expression and techniques.

This book should be a quick access guide to mime for stage and screen, for performance and teaching. It aims to answer the most common questions and myths about mime, such as: what is the origin and history of mime? Is mime the same as movement? Is mime about the white-face, stripy-top, French-looking guy I see on the streets? How can mime be applied to acting in theatre and film, how can it enhance my speaking and my body language, and does it affect personal well-being and confidence?

The exercises in this book are suggestions for starting points to find your own path with mime and movement. Students often copy their teacher’s movements before discovering what they can do on their own. Starting from a book and being alone in a room somewhere is an excellent first opportunity if you are new to mime. The greatest teacher is yourself: you don’t need to find the correct way, just your own way!

1

THE HISTORY OF MIME

This chapter offers a brief look at the history of mime. For anyone wishing to delve deeper into this comprehensive subject, Annette Lust’s book From the Greek Mimes to Marcel Marceau and Beyond (The Scarecrow Press, 2000) is a great resource with detailed information.

For the purposes of this chapter, the words ‘mime’ and ‘pantomime’ are used interchangeably. Throughout history, the use of the body to express emotion and story through posture, gesture, facial expressions and breath has been called both mime and pantomime, and historic references use both words to describe this. ‘Pantomime’ is not to be confused with the English performance tradition of bawdy, festive performances.

Mime may at times mean to ‘imitate’, but this is not the only skill of the mime artist, so like much other history, it can be hard to piece together.

ENTERING DOCUMENTED HISTORY

Mime enters written history between 1700BC and 110BC in Indian Hindu texts called the Vedas. Chinese drama was influenced by the Hindus, and a very old Chinese pantomime is said to be about Wu Wang’s conquest of China at least 1,000 years BC Japan’s Noh theatre roots may well date from these early times as well. Across Asia, the performance of mime has been carefully choreographed and honed so that even tiny movements of the eye, the breath and finger positions and actions hold an encoded meaning, which the audience has learnt to understand. This technical and detailed method may be likened to Decroux’s work in the twentieth century, three thousand years after its inception in the East.

Mime then crossed the oceans and walked on to the solid, well preserved recorded platform of Grecian terrain. These writings – opinions, reviews, plays and literature – report that mime was an established and well known art form in ancient Greece.

THE GREAT GREEKS

Greece is said to be the birthplace of modern mime. It charmed the playwrights and philosophers, and became recognized across the country, cropping up in village dances, in soldiers’ barracks and on a raised area we know as a stage. The ancient Greeks marry the words ‘pan’ (meaning ‘each’, ‘all’) with ‘mimeomai’ (meaning ‘I mimic’).

Masks, scripted works and choreographed dances all mingled with mime in the fertile land of Greece, as they always had done and as they continue to do so. Theatre, dance, movement and mime practitioners still debate which belongs to whom in terms of their respective histories.

THE ROYAL ROMANS

Despite these mild contentions between present-day practitioners, the development of mime continued in Rome, where it became very popular. Mime plays were written, and we see the familiar faces of Harlequin and other commedia dell’arte characters in Roman statues and art (although at this time they are not known by the names of the Italian characters such as Harlequin, the Dottore or Pantolone). Roman emperors were caught in feuds about who was the greatest mime artist. Julius Caesar, the famous Roman politician, travelled with an entourage of mime artists, and citizens wore the colours of the mime artist whose side they favoured, in the same way as today’s loyal football fans. For a long time mime was adored and loved by all.

However, as with all meteoric rises, there is often a hard fall. As the Roman Empire fell, so too did the popularity of mime.

THE DARK AGES

Here and there in Europe between the fifth and the fifteenth centuries, mime sometimes peeked its head from dingy street corners – but the Church held the lands and peoples in a firm grip, and gradually mime was forgotten, its light and colour fading from memory.

In Europe between the fifth and the fifteenth centuries, there are very few records of mime artistry, as the power of the Church excommunicated anyone caught watching theatre.

It was largely down to performing nomads, who struggled to put food in their mouths, that we now have a rich theatrical culture. They struggled, and suffered for their art, being that it was the only profession they knew, wandering from village to village, across borders and earning what they could, where they could, keeping the traditions of drama and mime alive in scared communities. Our romantic notion of the Bohemian artiste perhaps stems from the Dark Ages.

However, religious dramas (known as mystery, miracle and morality plays) were soon created to educate the populace as to the right and proper way of conducting themselves, their life and their worship, and once more mime had a place on the streets, in village squares and even inside churches. Mime performances incorporated gesture along with song and voice as a tool to engage apathetic audiences in the parables.

Actions and movements are written in Latin in the scripts of such plays, and it was the layman who performed mime actions of the scriptures and dedicated his life to the mime of the Bible stories. Performance began to infiltrate all the Christian festivals, and entertainment sprang up around the country again. Morris dancing and mummers’ plays had their origins in this re-emergence of theatre.

THE ITINERANT ITALIANS

Commedia dell’arte is not the subject of this chapter, but its life is undeniably wrapped up in that of mime. The Italian commedia actors were such masters of mime that in France, when they performed to the French natives, it is said they were able to understand every part of the story. Indeed it is often remarked that Italian natives were so naturally adept at comedy and gesture that even the village tailor performed a better harlequin than any seen in England, and the troupes were of such genius, they could read the ‘scenario’ before going on stage, and could perform without need for rehearsal, script or direction.

Comedy, clowning, buffoonery and such were all now ensconced in the performing culture across Europe. Clowns, harlequins and pierrots were seen with ‘floured’ faces, and this brought mime closer to its recognizable form today.

SHAKESPEARE IS ALIVE!

In the sixteenth century, personified Mime brushes engrained street dust from his breeches, pulls on some new hosiery, and saunters into theatres that have been influenced by the Italian plays. Ben Jonson, Thomas Kyd and Shakespeare all make reference to Mime’s exclusive appearance in ‘dumb shows’. The Puritan government suppressed theatre, but Mime stepped in as the star again in some dramatic exhibitions by Robert Cox. Performed under the guise of ‘rope dancing’, these performances delighted audiences all in fear of their own lives for watching theatrical shows. Perhaps it was down to this heroic gesture that John Weaver was motivated to honour a play after him, a pure pantomime, called a production of ‘dancing, action and motion’.

GARRICK, DRURY LANE AND LONDON

From the seventeenth century onwards, mime became popular amongst the élite, who rejected ‘straight acting’ in favour of mime’s magnificent ability to demonstrate story and feeling on stage. In R. J. Broadbent’s The History of Pantomime (Echo Library, 1901), David Garrick wrote:

They in the drama find no joys, But doat on mimicry and toys, Thus, when a dance is on my bill, Nobility my boxes fill; Or send three days before the time To crowd a new-made Pantomime.

It is suggested that Garrick’s success was down to his outstanding abilities at pantomime. Drury Lane theatre regularly relied on pantomimes for its trade. ‘Wiktionary’ refers to a pantomime (one who mimics all) as:

(now rare) A Classical comic actor, especially one who works mainly through gesture and mime.

This brings us nicely to the greatest comedy performer who is still revered today: Joseph Grimaldi.

THE EIGHTEENTH EPOCH

In the eighteenth century Joseph Grimaldi graced the stage with his unsurpassed reputation of being the greatest clown in memory. His mime was imbued with the greatest sense of fun, and as much as he was an actor and clown, he was a mime, and entertained thousands of people.

Friends, colleagues and Joseph Grimaldi’s own son continued to perform mime in London through to the late 1800s – whilst across the channel, Jean-Gaspard Deburau was born in 1796. This small young boy struggled to keep up with his acrobatic family. Often falling and stumbling, Deburau left the idea of the circus behind, and found himself outside a stage door. The childlike heart of Pierrot was embodied in Deburau, who carried the years of never fitting in within his soul. Mime helped his inner spiritual poetry be filtered through his limbs and facial expressions, and he found he was able to hold an audience in the palm of his hand. Deburau got his ‘break’ at the Théâtre des Funambules, which was as much in the dumps as Deburau was when he first arrived there. Jean-Gaspard Deburau carried mime into this down-on-its-luck theatre, and was thoroughly loved by his audience. Of Deburau was written:

I have never seen an artist who was more serious, more conscientious, more religious in his art. He loved it passionately and spoke of it as a grave thing, whilst always speaking of himself with the extremest modesty. He studied incessantly. He did not trouble to think whether the admirable subtleties of his play of countenance and his originality of composition were appreciated by artists. He worked to satisfy himself, and to realize his fancy. This fancy, which appeared to be so spontaneous, was studied beforehand, with extraordinary care.

THE LAST ONE HUNDRED YEARS

On 6 June 1930, the headline of the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph ran as follows (taken from Irene Mawer’s The Art of Mime, published by Methuen and Co. 1932):

Last of the Great French Mimes. The Great Severin is dead

One of the greatest mimes that France has ever known is dead. The last representative of a school of acting that passes away with him, the Great Severin will play Pierrot no more.

Although the history of mime often only covers Europe, it flourished everywhere at some time or another. America in the 1800s had popular performers and clowns mimicking Hamlet actors and creating mirth for audiences in New York. Russia and Germany (amongst others) had performers who developed their own ways of perfecting the expression of the human body. The great pedagogues Meyerhold and Brecht recognized the importance of using the body to capture the fullness of human expression in acting.

In 1901, R. J. Broadbent in the History of Pantomime predicted a surge of interest in mime in Britain. If mime is seen as the silent protagonist of the early silent movies, then he was indeed correct.

George Wague was one such actor in those early silent movies. He had previously played Pierrot on stage, and created his own pantomimes until his debut on screen. He paved the way for mime to move into modern times, and consulted with mime to figure out how best to teach the art and develop performers’ bodies so they were capable of creating everything from nothing. Wague and mime made astonishing changes with operatic singers, turning them into excellent actors as well as vocalists.

At about the same time, Jacques Copeau opened an acting school where mime actors started to harness its power. Etienne Decroux took these mime exercises and worked on them extensively, believing that it was possible for the body to express not only what is visible, but all that is invisible, the manifestation of the universal. All that is practically impossible to convey via text, but is experienced and understood by one and all.

Decroux codified movement and named his form ‘corporeal mime’. Decroux’s students, Jean Louis Barrault and Marcel Marceau, went on to work with mime in different but equally respected ways.

Jacques Lecoq filtered down mime’s lineage on the other branch of Jacques Copeau’s legacy. He trained with Copeau’s son-in-law, and became another great pedagogue. There was always a passive conflict between Decroux and Lecoq as to how mime could be used in the theatre. Whilst Decroux had a language for gesture, Lecoq trusted that a performer could discover for himself his own expression, and that it could be mixed with text, mask, set and lights.

From then until now, students from Lecoq’s school disseminated mime’s new appearance around the globe.

To this day students and tutors coming from both branches of Copeau’s lineage expound their own understandings of mime. Thus for some, the white face is decried, the stripy top expunged, or the street performer scorned. Nevertheless they all have a place in mime’s heritage.

MOVIE STAR MIME

Marceau attributed some of his inspiration to Charlie Chaplin, the famous screen actor who incorporated mime with his other talents to produce world-famous films. Jacques Tati is not as known as Chaplin, and is a very popular performer of screen mime, combining poetry and observation with a finesse not often seen in popular culture these days.

In Hollywood, mime became very popular in silent films, and was often accompanied by comedy.

To the movie star mime list we can add Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton and Max Lindar. In recent times, Carey Mulligan performed a short mime piece in the film Suffragette.

Mime troupes and mime-dedicated festivals have cropped up in recent times, but it is probably fair to say that the masses have not enjoyed mime performances since Marceau entertained them with his character ‘Bip’ on the television screen.

2

BASIC MIME TECHNIQUES

This chapter introduces some basic mime techniques. By doing something simply, you can look really good performing mime. When you first start it can be difficult to control your physicality, without moving too quickly or making actions too busy and unclear.

The basics of mime start to show how our movement creates illusion and meaning. We learn to tense and relax parts of our body at different times, we learn that doing one movement at a time clarifies what we are doing, and discover what stillness can add – and we learn how all these things combined begin to articulate our actions.

GRABBING AN OBJECT

Relax and Tense

The first exercise is holding mime objects. In mime classes you are taught how to pick up an invisible object in a variety of ways, which can seem very ‘technical’. This is a way to make this technique easier. I call it ‘relax and tense’. Before you grab an object your hand has to be relaxed. This creates contrast to when you do have something in your hand. If your hand is already tense, the audience assumes you are already holding something. The moment you grab an ‘object’, you need to tense your hand. Tension creates the illusion of weight, shape and substance. When an object is put down, you can relax your hand again. That’s it!

1. Standing in a ‘neutral’ position.

1.RELAX: Stand up straight, arms by your sides. Ensure that your whole body, arms and hands are relaxed.

2. Reaching for an object.