mime and pantomime

mime and pantomime, in the strict sense, a Greek and Roman dramatic entertainment representing scenes from life, often in a ridiculous manner. By extension, the mime and pantomime has come to be in modern times the art of portraying a character or a story solely by means of body movement (as by realistic and symbolic gestures). Analogous forms of traditional non-Western theatre are sometimes also characterized as mime or pantomime.

Early Western forms

The Greco-Roman mime was a farce that stressed mimetic action but which included song and spoken dialogue. The preliterary form can only be guessed at, and even the surviving fragments of the playlets of Epicharmus, a 5th-century-bce writer of comedies, yield only the scanty information that his mimes were concerned with scenes of daily life or with mythological travesty. Other Greek writers of mimes were Sophron (fl. c. 430 bce) and Herodas (3rd century bce).

The existence of a native Italian form of mime may safely be postulated. The first to give literary form to the Roman mime was the knight Decimus Laberius (c. 105–43 bce), who was eclipsed by the former slave Publilius Syrus. The presentation of mimes was a traditional feature of the annual Floralia festival, which, being licentious in spirit, opened the popular stage to naked mime actresses.

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Though only fragments exist, it is clear that the usual mime plot, while free to indulge in biting topical allusion, centred principally on scenes of adultery and other vice. Evidence exists that acts of adultery were actually performed on the mime stage during the Roman Empire. Execution scenes with convicted criminals in place of actors are on record. When condemning the Roman theatre, the early Christian writers attacked primarily the mimes in this state of degeneracy. Stock characters and situations of the classical mime found their way into the comic drama of Plautus and reappeared greatly modified in the commedia dell’arte, a Renaissance extempore entertainment with roots in the Roman theatrical tradition.

The Roman pantomime differed from mime in two ways: its themes were usually loftier, and, unlike the mime actor, the pantomimus wore various masks, which identified his characters but deprived him of speech and of the use of facial expressions. Thus his art was primarily one of posture and gesture, in which hand movements were particularly expressive and important.

The pantomimus, dressed like a tragic actor in a cloak and long tunic, usually performed solo, accompanied by an orchestra that included cymbals and other rhythm instruments, flutes, pipes, and trumpets. The libretto of the piece was sung or recited by a chorus and was usually adapted from a well-known tragedy. Both the music and the librettos of the pantomimes were considered to be of little artistic value. The talent and skill of the pantomimus himself were of supreme importance, and the greatest performers enjoyed the favour of wealthy patricians and even emperors, such as Nero and Domitian.

Oriental dance-dramas

In Asia the art of mimetic drama was developed long before it achieved definite form in the Western world. In India the union of music, song, and dance with character portrayals took place several centuries bce. Out of such native drama, with added dialogue, grew the bharata natyam. One of the classical Hindu dance-dramas, it is meticulously described in the Natya-shastra, the great treatise of Sanskrit dramaturgy composed before the 3rd century ce. The two-hour performances feature a solo dancer backed by musicians and a singer; the dancer neither leaves the stage nor changes costumes. Sections of dance alternate with sections of conventionalized gesturing. Mimetic scenes derived from the mythology of Vishnu are still sometimes enacted by the Bengali jatras, folk pageants combining words and conventionalized mime, and the rasas, folk dance-dramas. In the 20th century, authentic classical dancing of India was introduced to the West by Uday Shankar to the accompaniment of Indian music played on native instruments.

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In the theatre of China and Japan, mime acquired a role unknown in the West, becoming an integral part of the major dramatic genres. In Chinese drama the conventions of gesture and movement, as well as the symbolism of the stage properties, are immense in scope and mystifying to those unfamiliar with the traditional forms.

English pantomime

The English pantomime originated in the popular harlequinade afterpieces of early 18th-century dramatic productions. Similar to the French Arlequin comic dances, these spectacles, employing commedia dell’arte characters accompanied by music and dance, initially were performed without words, although some added speech later.

Under the Victorians the subjects of pantomime shifted to fairy tales, with interludes of juggling and acrobatics, providing more wholesome entertainment for children. After the mid-19th century, performances of pantomime became limited to an extended Christmas season. It became traditional for a young actress to take the part of the hero, or principal boy, and a comic actor to portray an old woman, or dame, for comic relief. Popular pantomimes in the 20th century included Cinderella, The Babes in the Wood, Aladdin, Robinson Crusoe, Mother Goose, Blue Beard, and Goody Two-Shoes.

Modern mime

Modern Western mime developed into a purely silent art whereby meanings are conveyed solely through gesture, movement, and expression. Its influence was felt strongly in ballet, where the formal posturing of classic style modulated into the descriptive silence of modern dramatic dance movement. In the United States, silent film mimes such as Charlie Chaplin and Ben Turpin, television entertainers such as Sid Caesar, and circus clowns such as Emmett Kelly were masters in the ancient tradition. The high art of modern mime, however, was reached in France, where its practice was ennobled philosophically by Étienne Decroux, Jean-Louis Barrault, and Marcel Marceau. Marceau defined mime as “the art of expressing feelings by attitudes and not a means of expressing words through gestures.”