Decadence: Exploring ideas

George & Taylor

 The performance of pantomime originates at its earliest in Ancient Greece, although performances were not necessarily silent. In Medieval Europe, early forms of mime such as "mummer plays" and later "dumb-shows" evolved. In early nineteenth century Paris, Jean-Gaspard Deburau solidified the many attributes that we have come to know in modern times—the silent figure in white-face.
Mime is usually performed on-stage, with Marcel Marceau and his character "Bip" being the most famous.Traditionally, these sorts of performances involve the actor/actress wearing tight black and white clothing with white facial make-up. However, contemporary mimes often perform without white-face. Similarly, while traditional mimes have been completely silent, contemporary mimes, while refraining from speaking, sometimes employ vocal sounds when they perform. Mime acts are often comical, but some can be very serious. 

Plain white worked well

The use of the plain white face is to show the lack of emotion being displayed by the character - We thought that by having contrasting colours with a white face will show that we are paying similar yet contrasting characters

I hired out some models!

Knowing that Berkoff studied a lot of Mime work (with Marcel Marceau being influential to him) me and Taylor discussed ideas on costume design and we thought it would be good to have plain white faces with contrasting features and so, this half term I took home a box of face-paints and stage blood and started experimenting with various styles and design.
 



We got a little carried away with the make-up experimenting, after all it was Halloween!