From our files: An interview with Marcel Marceau

In 1974, the Monitor interviewed the preeminent French mime, who died Saturday.

posted September 23, 2007 at 12:00 p.m. EST

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Mime is often called the most difficult of the performing arts – and even Marceau – mime extraordinary, considers it in the class of ballet, itself a skill needed long training and great precision. Mime partakes of ballet or at least of dance, in its disciplines. As the Frenchman demonstrates every time he is on a stage the mimist's entire body does the talking.

He is aware

Marceau is well aware of this position at the top of the mime hierarchy. He says of his contribution to the arts – a contribution that made the 20th century aware of a forgotten form - "I am a company in myself. My repertoire has become a bible for all mimes in the world. What we [Marceau uses the editorial we to mean I] have done is for a hundred years at least. Nobody has done it before...I have created a complete grammar of mime."

There are many mimes, he added who have used "the grammar we have invented." He pointed out that "no written tradition had been left." Mime, he recalled, goes back to the beginnings of theatrical history. He spoke of the 17th-century fair-theaters, and traditions about 18th-century mime, but emphasizes that no one knows just how mimes of those days performed. The "grammar" had to be rewritten.

As a very young would-be performer, Marceau studied with Etienne Decroux in Paris. "When I studied with Decroux we were three pupils. When I became..." he hesitated, then added, "famous – I don't like that word – everybody want to study with Decroux because I had." Thinking back toward those early days, he recalled, " There was not one mime in the U.S when I come in '56. Now there are lots of mimes here." He spoke of the National Theater of the Deaf. Its artistic director he said, "was my pupil." And among the other mimes, well or lesser-known, he added, "Some have been pupils of mine, or pupils of pupils. Some have taken Kabuki style, some Marceau style."

Talk-show fame

And then Marceau, speaking quietly and wonderingly, underlined a 20th-century fact of life that rarely fails to astonish even the most knowledgeable performed. " I wouldn't imagine," he said, "I would become famous in America for my talk shows." He was not referring to the television special in which he demonstrated his art. He meant the many guest appearances he made on the shows of well-known host. "I played in Philadelphia, " he said, "and maybe 3,000 people saw. I speak on a talk show for 20 minutes, and millions every night see me."

Marceau, having reclaimed from obscurity the art of mime, is also well aware of history. "I have all my work filmed,' he disclosed. "It's available." Thus future generation, even those who come after the ones Marceau contemplates teaching – when he lets up on his present rugged performance schedule – will still have his filmed work as mentor.

Meanwhile he would like to make a film - "a film which belongs to me, which I would direct," His mimodramas(or little mimed dramas) have already become as famous as his name: "Death Before Dawn," "Praxitele and the Golden Fish" and "Candide." And he has two books on the market, the Marcel Marceau Counting Book, and the Marcel Marceau Alphabet Book.

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