Mime Workshop 3

Today was great. We began by doing some warmups and then got straight to talking about the final project. I cant wait until we actually do it. We incorporated what we have been talking about in class, rituals, traditions, and hollow verses holy. Gregg showed us a mime technique/skit called metamorphosis. It is when the mimer changes the action in the middle of the action, or "metamorphs" into something else. For example the mimer could start out by tossing a baseball and then changes in the middle of the action into throwing a grenade. It becomes even more interesting when the solider throwing the grenade suddenly becomes a priest preaching in front of a church. We are going to take the idea of metamorphoses and of rituals and combine them to create our final project. Today we brainstormed for ideas of rituals that we could mime. The next step is figuring out the order we will change into them. This is very important as the order will determine the entire message of the little play. I sort of had an ah-ha moment in class when practiced today. This is why mime exists! Gregg was able to keep us on our toes by changing from a soldier to a priest in a matter of seconds. He evolved before our eyes. This is not something you could do in plays or even in movies. Sure, you could flash contrasting images in film using cuts, and change something into something completely different using special effects but it's not the same. It's like why mime is silent, the audience comes up with more interesting sounds and visuals on their own.