Two weekends ago, I spent 7 hours in a course that taught the art of mime in a little historic theater in a random spot in Hollywood. Have you ever watched a mime perform? With the white gloves and suspenders? It always seemed silly to me, and I’m not a really silly or expressive person (at least in my head), so this was on my list of uncomfortable experiences although this one wasn’t a “10 out of 10” on the uncomfortable scale. If I’m being honest, though, nothing is high of a score anymore, and that just tells me this practice pays, and it surely has in daily life. Also, I don’t have really any photos beyond the ones I snuck because it was closed doors and cell phones free to be distraction-free.
I had no idea who to expect in the “class.” Supposedly, actors and actresses do this course to help hone their skills, but I wasn’t exactly holding my breath for Scarlett Johansson to pop in. Still, it was Hollywood, so who could guess. The class had 8 people, and we were quite the menagerie of all ages, races, and so on. Maybe someone in there was somewhat famous, but I’m the last person to ask. We all seemed eager but somewhat “told” to be in this random theater on a Sunday afternoon. Adding to the motley crew was our teacher, a man with bulging eyes, a strong nose, and a serious love of mime which has been built over 30+ years.
The class started with an overview of mime. Like many of these uncomfortable experiences, what seems simple is far from it. For starters, the history is immense. Mime performance dates back to Ancient Greece, and there are books upon books written about how to perform it, the various styles adopted over centuries, the evolution in modern theater, and so on. I appreciated our teacher’s definition of art: representation + stylization equaling an interpretation. So mime is representing real life but with a flare that makes it more than just “acting.”
Our instructor then broke out several charts to help us understand the origin of root, “spir,” which is used in mime for “inspire,” “respiration,” and “spirit.” “Spir” means breath and everything about mime surrounds this. Since the audience can not see a light bulb turn on over our heads, for instance, we have to show “spirit” which translates to “the life force,” or visually, a little quick inhale that physically shows a change in thought. We practiced finding and plucking an apple off a tree for about an hour to develop our “spirit.” That was a lot of spirit work, but such a seemingly simple gesture makes a mime great.
We spent another good chunk of time around “stage presence” which is valuable to anyone, as well as exploring various “movement centers” of characters. This was particularly interesting: Movement centers (the head, neck, chest, stomach, hips, or legs) can completely dictate a persona. A boastful, asshole guy? Movement center in the chest. An old man who penny-pinches and chases young ladies? Movement center in the stomach. A coy lady who gossips and is a servant? The neck, and so on. Round and round on stage, we went with these movement centers, our stage presence, our apple picking, and so on. I thought I would lose it laughing a few times, but the class was serious like our instructor so I held it together. And maybe it’s because we were stuck in that room so long or so immersed in perfecting the skills that no one seemed to care how ridiculous we all looked. Perhaps that’s the big take away: get so immersed into something that you lose yourself to externalities. Isn’t that how the best performances are done anyway?