by Mr. Bones
Paul J. Curtis-Founder/Director of the American Mime Theatre, Chairman of American Mime, Inc., and Founder of International Mimes and Pantomimists. Mr. Curtis has taught, lectured, directed, and performed since 1952 and has created a unique performing art -- a complete theatre medium called American Mime. The history of American Mime is fully documented and available to the public at the Research Library of The Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, and Harvard College Library, Theatre Collection.
I asked Paul Curtis
to comment on the American Mime medium for this book and the interview
he sent me seems to emphasize and embrace our spirit at work in Le Centre
Du Silence in Boulder. This interview is copyrighted by Paul Curtis 1975.Q. Where were
you trained and what motivated your departure from traditional Mime?PJC. I was trained
by Erwin Piscator at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School of Social
Research. Following this training, I went to Europe to explore different
forms of theatre. I was disturbed by what seemed to me the arbitrary separation
between the arts of acting and dance. For example, from India to China
there are no separate words in any language for dancer and actor. While
in Europe, I discovered such things as the Peking Opera, and the work of
French pantomimists, among other forms. I was struck by the silence of
the French Mime, although I felt' their product was innocent of the discoveries
of the modern dance and Stanislavsky's contribution to the art of acting.
Returning to this country, I thought it would be interesting to present
for American actors a project of Mime that would at once demonstrate its
potential and correct the limitations of the medium as practiced by the
French. That project resulted in a concert at the 92nd Street "Y".
This concert produced an unusually strong audience reaction to a product
which was not overloaded with merit. However, the company, fortified by
this audience reaction, wanted to continue and as a result The American
Mime Theatre was created.Q. What is Mime?PJC. A definition
of Mime is as impossible as a definition of acting or dance. It's like
trying to tell you what water tastes like. Mime is a performing art that
is defined by each performer and school that practices it. Because the
art form lies between the two arts of acting and dance, any definition
must reflect the acquired skills and ability to perform that which neither
the actor or the dancer can do better.Q. Is there a difference
between Mime and Pantomime?PJC. The word Mime
embraces many diverse forms of the art. It is like the word dance which
covers, with equal accuracy, an Ojibway tribal celebration, the classic
ballet, or the tap dancing of Buck and Bubbles. The French School uses
the two terms synonymously which has generated a great deal of confusion.
In the American Mime Theatre, we use the following definitions because
they are useful. Pantomime is the art of creating the illusion of reality
by dealing with imaginary objects or situations. Its art rests on the ability
to imply weight, texture, line, rhythm and force to the air around them.
Mime, on the other hand, is the art of acting silently through various
kinds of theatrical movement.Q. What is the difference
between American Mime and the French School of Mime?PJC. The French
School of the art is primarily that of Pantomime. Pantomime engenders in
the viewer a feeling of credibility by the way the practitioner handles
the air around him. We use very little Pantomime.American Mime is a medium
for silent actors who play symbolic activities in characterization and
express the feelings and desires of their characters honestly through a
kind of motivated movement we call form.Q. You are credited
with creating the Mime tradition called American Mime. How would you describe
this work?PJC. In the first
place, I did not start out to create a new Mime tradition. I wanted to
create a dramatic event that would combine acting and moving to produce
a more meaningful theatrical experience. This work slowly produced a different
performing art from that of the traditional French Pantomime. American
Mime is simply a particular balance of the arts of acting, movement, Pantomime,
design, and playwriting.The two most important
facts about American Mime are these: First, it is a complete theatre medium
in a way that no other Mime form I know of is. That means there is a complete
body of aesthetic laws and limitations governing every aspect of its activities
from performance to script material that insures the consistency of its
aesthetic products.Second, The American
Mime Theatre has functioned as a professional Mime company continuously
for over gears making it the oldest professional Mime theatre in the world.
This company was the first professional Mime company in the Twentieth Century
in this country. It was formed in 1952 when there was no professional Mime
activity in the United States and no European Mimes had performed here.Q. What kind of material
does The American Mime Theatre perform?PJC. The primary
aim of our medium, regarding script material, is to explore the internal
landscape. We create mime plays that are made up of activity symbols. These
activities must be logical on the narrative level and yet clearly communicate
the symbolic significance behind them. Our content is myriad forms and
facets of spirituality. It is our aim in performance to elicit from the
audience through their intellects and emotions a direct spiritual response.
While all of our plays are symbolic, some are more abstract than others.
In most of our plays, the acting values dominate the experience. All American
Mimes are trained to develop script material in our particular form of
group creation. Our entire Repertory has been developed in this manner.
We choose each play out of what individually and collectively concerns
us most at the time of creation and in relationship to what we already
have in the Repertory. In performance, from 5 to 7 different plays are
performed, each of them representing a different aspect of American Mime
script material.Q. What theatrical
equipment do you employ in your performances?PJC. Our performers
appear in black skintight units before a white cyclorama. Sets are never
-used. Masks, costume, properties, and set pieces are used sparingly and
are created to be frankly theatrical. We try to produce a lean clean look
by using equipment created to suggest more than it shows.Q. Do you use music?PJC. We use very
little music. Our sound ranges from abstract vocal sounds made by the performers
to electronic scores.Q. Do the performers
speak?PJC. No, we don't.
Although once in a great while the play will contain a special use of one
word.Q. Do you use white
face?PJC. No, we don't.
That tradition began in the commedia dell'arte. It was originally the theatrical
signature of a doltish character from upper Bergamo who was a baker's assistant
and the white powder was simply the theatrical equation for flour on his
face. The French school uses this device rather successfully as part of
its mystique to accomplish a deft separation from the social experience.
In a performance, our performers may play in 5 or 6 different mime plays,
and the use of white face would seriously limit the possibilities of achieving
the separation between characters and the dynamics of the plays.Q. Describe the training
program at the American Mime Theatre.PJC. Our beginning
course involves the process of the student becoming proficient in both
acting and moving. The control and skill of the body must be fused with
the motivation of the actor. To achieve this proficiency, we first must
get, both individually and collectively, a psychological freedom that enables
the actors to touch and use their truest responses in the performing process.
We work on acting skills in the areas of motivation, characterization,
objectives, and interplay, through our own form, which is the extension
of our character's feelings into the body in accord with the dynamics of
the particular play.Q. What are the requirements
to study at your school?PJC. The only requirement
is motivation. To begin, you must commit three months of unbroken study
and work outside of class for ten minutes a day. While this demand may
seem slight, it is beyond the capabilities of 99% of the non-professional
students. Most students, while fond of the concept of themselves as performers,
are totally unequipped with the motivation to seriously study any performing
art. Or more simply, their innocence obscures the inherent price of progress-which
is intense and continued effort.Most students who study
anything are not truly interested in achieving proficiency. They are there
for other reasons. The student who achieves professional proficiency needs
only one thing: motivation. This simply means that it is essential that
the student understand that no one is responsible for their creative product
but the student. When that is clearly understood, the student is introduced
to the heady concept that any improvement achieved is produced by the accuracy
and amount of work that the student does outside of the class structure.
That concept generally takes two years to understand.Q. Are there other
Mime companies in the country?PJC. Probably while
you asked that question three others were formed. Mime activity in this
country is growing so fast that we who practice it can barely keep abreast
of its development. Every week there are new practitioners and new companies.
We formed an organization called International Mimes & Pantomimists
out of the need to keep all of us in the profession abreast of what's happening.Q. Could one make
a living as a professional Mime?PJC. Probably not.
After 20 years, we are just beginning to make a living. The most proficient
practitioners of the art form have great difficulty in making a living;
and until you achieve that same level of proficiency, which generally takes
about six years, it would be highly unlikely. The American Mime Theatre
has been funded by the New York State Council on the Arts, The Rockefeller
Foundation and others, and we still have great difficulty in making ends
meet. Mime is one of the last fields of endeavor one should enter to insure
one of financial stability. On the other side of this, the opportunities
for professional mimes today are expanding with a rapidity that would have
seemed unbelievable even a few years ago.Q. What is your reaction
to the increasing popularity of Mime in the country?PJC. I am both delighted
and concerned. Delighted because for these art forms to take their place
as equals beside the other performing arts we need many more practitioners,
training schools, performance experience and justified critical acclaim.
I am concerned with the growing number of people who, without credentials,
call themselves mimes or pantomimists, who are not performers at all, have
no training in the art forms whatsoever and who perform and even teach
under the guise of professionalism. I don't mean for a minute to deprecate
the work of the beginner or the amateur, whose work we need and who should
be encouraged. I take issue only with the claims of professionalism from
the totally unequipped. These people are damaging to the growth of Mime
and Pantomime. In time, an enlightened theatre audience will correct this
condition, but until then, this damage will be formidable.Mime has become chic
this year. in the do-it-yourself panorama of the pop-art mediums it is
enjoying something of a fad. I don't think that this popularity is based
on anything real, nor that it will last or increase. Being an American
Mime performer in the United States at this time in history is a commitment
rather akin to becoming a Trapist Monk in Italy in the 1 7th Century. And
I see no reason that that should meaningfully change in the future. Or,
said in another way, the theatre is kept alive not by popularity, or the
psychological necessity of its products, but by the internal need, or compulsion,
of its practitioners to practice it in order to lead a creative life.Q. How is American
Mime received today by critics and audiences?PJC. The American
Mime theatre has become hunchbacked with accolades. We are known as a "serious
attraction," an artistic success. Loosely translated this means our
work is generally not as bad as most of the professional theatre, we believe
in what we are doing and have money trouble. There is a great confusion
when we talk about critics. The primary function of a critic is to aid
the artist and for this he must be armed with enough information concerning
the form itself and the aim of the artist to bring his heightened perceptions
to bear on the creative product against his personal standards of excellence.
The function of a reviewer is to apprise the community at large of the
general experience that the creative product affords. The function of any
performing art is to touch and move the audience, to create a spiritual
enrichment. Any performing art has potentially the capacity to do this.
It is seldom achieved because most people, Mimes included, don't do what
they do very well.Q. Where does The
American Mime Theatre go from here?PJC. Straight uphill.
The mimes at The American Mime Theatre practice this Medium as a way of
life. They not only study, perform, teach, and create the material for
the repertory, but they administer all the business of The American Mime
Theatre and American Mime, Inc. We spent the first 1 5 years of our life
developing our Medium. Now we are committed to the evolution of a superior
creative product and the promotion of this Medium throughout the world.
