December 1, 2005

Mime Company performs this weekend

Pantomime is an ancient form of entertainment. This December, the eight-member Northwestern Mime Company will demonstrate this expressive silent form of communication during four stage performances.

The Mime Company — comprised of three graduate students and five undergraduate interns who have taken beginning and advanced mime coursework — will write and stage this year’s Mime Show.

Performances are scheduled for 8 p.m. tonight (Dec. 1), Friday, Dec. 2 and Saturday, Dec. 3, and 2 p.m. Sunday Dec. 4, at the Josephine Louis Theatre.

With the goal of promoting the art of mime as a viable performance art, the company will stage self-composed company and solo works.

The Mime Company, which has toured throughout the United States and Europe, sees silent art as a way to reach out to individuals of all ages and from all cultures with a message that celebrates their common humanity and creates an individual experience for each person in the audience.

Theatre Professor Bud Beyer, founder and director of the Northwestern University Mime Company, will direct the show.

“What engages an audience with mime is the necessity of their own imaginations being involved in the process of watching,” said Beyer, who studied mime with Etienne Decroux, Marcel Marceau’s teacher. Marceau is considered the world’s greatest mime.

”The experience becomes very personal as each audience plays their own images against the fabric created by the mime. Our hope is to find the universal spirit and experience that unites us all as human beings — both in our universal comedy — and in our shared drama,” added Beyer.

Tickets are $20 for the general public; $18 for Northwestern faculty and staff; and $10 for students.

For more information or to order tickets by phone, call the Theatre and Interpretation Center Box Office at (847) 491-7282.