Playing with the Invisible - A Course in Mime

Classes with Les are ideal for performers (whether professional or not), including actors, dancers, comedy performers, magicians, puppeteers, street entertainers, singers … in fact, ANY curious person wishing to extend their range of skills.

Les uses the Gaulier’s method, The Game (Le Jeu) to FUN-FILL the mime through the enjoyment of playing, inviting you to become reacquainted with your inner child.

You will be encouraged to discover your own strengths using mime (influenced by some other practices) to create believable illusions, and to develop your instinctive clown and acting skills to bolster your characterisations.

If you come to one of our courses, little by little, weekly improvisations will create a freedom of expression within you, that you'll find popping up in the rest of your life.

Syllabus

Our course will cover all of the following, our workshops will vary on content:

Weight a minute

• How to shift your weight to create effort through pushing and pulling.

• Using your weight placement to become a victim - being pushed and pulled.

• Your attitude to the above conditions – the play and philosophy of struggle.

Isolation (but not that kind)

• To create believable illusions through awareness of the articulation of your body’s joints.

• States of tension in the body creating resistance – the key to illusions!

Classic Mime Illusions

• You will learn these illusions as stepping-stones to your own creations.

• These will include robotics, slow motion, stairs, leaning, surfaces, walls, doors, glass, elevators, escalators, driving, eating, slow motion, walks on-the-spot, ropes, ladders, marionettes and puppets, sitting, reading, animals, sports, hobbies and of course, the ‘moonwalk’ among many others...

Week by Week

Class 1 - Getting to know you, us and mime.

Introductions and class discussion about what everyone would like to get from the course.

We will discuss the benefits and limitations of playing in the Zoom-environment.

We will be encouraging you to work together in pairs and small groups later in the course, and in this session we will be identifying who shares the same size space with similar lighting for possible groupings.

FIT TO MIME

• Weekly exercises to prepare the raw material – YOU.

• Mime techniques for small and large muscle sets are practised focussing on the details which ensure CLARITY.

• These will be regular exercises to create a ‘muscle memory’ to support one’s mime and comic/dramatic scenes.

BEING PRESENT

• Improving your on-stage presence through your standing posture, awareness of the audience and developing a sense of play.

• Your confidence will increase through coordination, timing and moving in different rhythms.

BEING OPEN

• That’s just it … being open and listening ….watching… not judging.

USE OF MIME

• A weekly creation spot where the day’s exercises are put into context in a scene or story.

• Here some volunteers will create short scenes via Zoom breakout rooms.

• Comments and input from all encouraged and welcomed in a supportive environment.

Classes 2 – 4: Introducing SIMPLICITY. CLARITY. ACCURACY.

• A 10 minute warm up of the body using mime techniques to create illusions.

• Spins and turns of the body in space.

• The importance of curves and graceful movements.

• Gestures and gesticulation.

• Style and stylization.

• Minimising (is magic).

• Embodying your thoughts.

Embodying your Feelings.

• Exploring and clarifying the emotional and mental process of mime.

• Intelligence – the variations of your capacity for logic and its application in devising and improvisation.

• Clown – how fun is your mime?

• Music – used to support and even create emotional landscapes in which to play.

Classes 5-7 - Showmanship, FUN and comedy.

The Elements

• How the influence and embodiment of Earth, Air, Fire and Water influences your character.

• Developing of your Narrative.

• What story do you want to tell?

Material Science

• Taking the elements further to draw upon the nature of all materials in the physical world.

Feed your character with these elements. They will carry you:

• Exploration of Age and Gender.

• Caricature and Subtlety.

• Performing more than one Character simultaneously

Class 8 - Over to you

• A summary of the first seven classes with student-driven recap of whichever part(s) of the course you would like to cover again

• Experiencing people and objects around you.

• Creating your limitless Virtual World....

Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash