Mimes
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Mime supposedly began in the Theater of Dionysus in Athens, perhaps as far back as the third century B.C. These mimes were not entirely silent, as we think of mimes today, but the spoken element was minimized. There was usually a chorus, typical of Greek theater of the time. Greek mime plays were often tragedies that had a moral lesson. Stories frequently included fighting, adultery, and various vices. Early mime artists in Greece were called phylakes and included women as well as men. Well-known authors of mimes include Decimus Laberius, Epicharmus, Sophron, Publilius Syrus and Herodas. Like actors and actresses of today, a mimes fame could bring them the attention of the rich and powerful.
By the time of the fall of Rome, mimes were performing at banquets and courts all over Europe. Roman mime artists were called mimus or saltator, but the word “mime” by then was often used as a catch-all term for any sort of short dramatic or comedic acted entertainment, sometimes expanding to include sword swallowers and jugglers. Roman mime was called fibula riciniata and was a mix of farce sketch, dancing, singing and acrobatics. Stock characters evolved (stupid husband, greedy pig, foolish old man, devious woman, etc). These developed a non-silent, satirical, and often political comedy that evolved into such theatre genres as the Italian Commedia dellarte, the dumb show, Masque, and British pantomime. The most well known exponents of these classical roots at the beginning of the twentieth century of these traditions are the Italian couple DaToday, in the theatrical world, there are two types of mimes. The first one has grown from studies of people like Etienne Decroux, often called the “father of modern mime”, or Jacques Lecoq. Their aim is not to replace words with gesture, but to express with the body something complementary, something the text does not express. The goal was “making the invisible visible” using the body to express thoughts, emotions, metaphors, using the full range of movement allowed by the human body and not just an exaggerated version of everyday gesture. Decroux called this art form “corporeal mime”.
Henryk Tomaszewski began developing an equally modern mime theater in Poland after World War II. Tomazewskis mime theatre developed largely independently of both the innovations of either Decroux or Lecoq, and popular theater forms of the commedia dellarte and street performance.
What united these modern schools is that they were all concerned with creating a new type of theater: either mime as an independent discipline, not subsumed as part of an actors or dancers craft, or mime as part of an avant-garde experimental theater.
Since the 1980s, many mimes trained in the “modern” tradition of Decrouxs corporeal mime have developed work called “Post-modern mime”. Post-modern mime recognizes mime as an independent theatrical discipline, but incorporates elements from other disciplines, and media, such as puppetry, spoken word, text, and video.
A more traditional branch of mime, is often called pantomime, and characterized by