The art of silence

UNESCO Courier, May, 1998 by Michel Fargeon

* You have been appearing on stage all over the world for more than fifty years. Why is it that you are more popular abroad than at home in France?

Marcel Marceau: I have performed a great deal in France. It was here, in 1947, that I created the character of Bip, the dreamy little poet who appears in all my shows. After performing in Jean Louis-Barrault's troupe, I set up my own company in 1948, and between then and 1964 I staged twenty-six mime plays, or "mimodramas" as I prefer to call them. Since pure mimodrama was not recognized as a theatrical art form I received no subsidy, so I had to raise the funds for my productions by international tours. I have given performances on all five continents, with particular success in the United States and Japan, and appeared many times on television. But my financial difficulties, particularly after the only partial success of Don Juan, a mimodrama adapted from the play by Tirso de Molina, produced in 1964, forced me to disband my troupe that year and begin appearing alone on stage.

I became a solo mime, but unlike singers, who can be listened to at any time on records or on the radio, mimes are masters of silence, soon forgotten if they don't appear on stage regularly.

* Mime is a universal language that doesn't require translation. Perhaps that is another explanation of your success?

M.M.: Yes, that's true, but French audiences seem to me rather conservative, despite the fact that France has a great tradition of mime and has produced many famous exponents of the art. UNESCO asked me to be one of its goodwill ambassadors but unfortunately, as I am always on tour, I didn't think I could be very effective in that role, though I did work with that splendid Organization on a film defending copyright and authors' rights.

Eventually I asked the French authorities to help me prevent the art of mime from disappearing. As a result I was able to set up the Marcel Marceau International School of Mimodrama in Paris, which receives a subsidy from the City of Paris. It provides courses of training in several subjects (dance, fencing, acrobatics, drama) and is attended by students from all over the world. Some former students are working with me on the preparation of a show, The Bowler Hat, a tribute to Chaplin that will be performed internationally in several theatres.

* Do you feel when you are on stage that you are delivering a text, even though you don't say a word?

M.M.: Yes indeed, I feel that I am both an author and an actor at the same time. Although my performance is silent, I am not acting by means of gesture alone. I am using the power of thought. I communicate with the audience by means of the thought that goes into every movement and every pose. Writers make contact with their readers by means of words and the way they give form to words through a story. Mimes are always, by definition, wordless, but they present the fable of human life on stage by means of an art that transcends words. I often make use of themes that transcend language, such as The Heart Eater, The Cage, or The Mask-Maker, which are the titles of some of my sketches. They are actually parables that express deep thoughts. Dancers do this by movement, but the mime does it by remaining motionless, by simply being there

* Could it be said that the spectators recreate within themselves what you are doing on stage?

M.M.: Yes, exactly. Unless the audience is drawn into the action, the mime has failed to get his message across the footlights, his performance is closer to mimesis than to the true art of mime. He has not succeeded in radiating the poetical aura that evokes in the spectator what I would describe as a "zen" identification with the character portrayed. Laughter is aroused by what appear to us as distortions or discrepancies in relation to what is "normal", but the laughing stops when the outcome is tragic, when death intervenes. The great Charlie Chaplin's films illustrate this very well. Although the cinema audience go along to laugh at Chaplin's antics, at some point they stop laughing, they succumb to emotion and suddenly see the character he plays in a different light. Comedy and tragedy disrupt the rules established by society.

* What influence have Chaplin's films had on your work?

M.M.: The character of Bip was entirely inspired by Chaplin. He was very popular when I was a child, and by the age of ten I was already imitating his funny walk. He and my teacher, Etienne Decroux, who invented the grammar of mime, its rigorous control of the body, inspired me to opt for the art of silence. I also studied under Charles Dullin, who taught me about lyrical rhythm and the inspiring power of the spoken word. Chaplin in fact started out by performing in music halls, as a singer, dancer and acrobat. His performance in silent films was pure mime and he was so affected by that experience that, long after the talkies had come in, he was still turning down speaking roles.

* You could have been a dancer...

M.M.: No, I might have had a talent for movement, but dancing involves pirouettes and leaps whereas mime, an art of bodily expression, of what my mentor Etienne Ducroux called "moving statuary", borrows its postures from Graeco-Roman statues, giving it scope for beauty and virtuosity. Immobility is a very important part of it, but so are acrobatics and the visual element. Since it can be abstract, surrealist or melodramatic at will, it has an explosive impact on the feelings. There is in the theatre of mime a kind of inner respiration that renders visible the invisible, sculpts forms out of space and lends wings to the characters' thoughts. Whereas the dancer is more ethereal and tends to fly away like a balloon, the mime artist is held down by his body movements.