- Person
- Marcel Marceau
- Lived
- 1923–2007
- Field
- Mime, theater
- From
- French
The story
After surviving the war in the French Resistance, Marcel Marceau studied in Paris under Étienne Decroux, the great teacher of modern mime, and joined the theater company of Jean-Louis Barrault. In 1947 he created Bip, a clown in a striped sweater and a battered opera hat decorated with a flower, whose small triumphs and misfortunes stood for the fragility of life.
In 1949, after winning the Deburau Prize, he founded the Compagnie de Mime Marcel Marceau, at the time the only company in the world devoted entirely to pantomime. His short pieces, The Cage, Walking Against the Wind, The Mask Maker and Youth, Maturity, Old Age and Death, became classics. A critic wrote that the last of these did in less than two minutes what most novelists cannot do in volumes.
Because mime needs no translation, Marceau's art crossed every border. His first United States tour in 1955 and 1956 began at the Phoenix Theater in New York and ended with standing-room crowds in city after city. He went on to perform in South America, Africa, Australia, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Russia and across Europe, and reached millions more through television. He was still touring in his 80s.
He was also a teacher. In 1978 he founded the International School of Mimodrama of Paris, which the City of Paris later supported with a grant for a three-year course, and in 1996 he set up the Marceau Foundation to promote mime in the United States. Performers of many kinds learned from him; Michael Jackson said he often watched Marceau perform and borrowed from his movement.
Marceau called his work the art of silence and said it spoke to the soul like music. In 2002 he served as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Second World Assembly on Aging. When he died in 2007, he had shown audiences in dozens of countries that a single performer, without words, could make people of every language laugh and weep together.
Why it matters
Marceau's performances, school and students kept mime alive as a living art, and his wordless pieces are still studied and performed by actors and mimes worldwide.
About Marcel Marceau
French mime who helped smuggle Jewish children to safety in the Resistance, then carried the wordless art of mime to audiences on every continent for 60 years.
More about Marcel Marceau
Sources
- Marcel Marceau Wikipedia
- Marcel Marceau Jewish Virtual Library
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.