Meet the mime man

A slightly delayed session did not dampen the children’s enthusiasm at the Story Arts Festival on Saturday. After all, it was this session on mime by Madhusudan aka Mime Madhu’s that they were all eagerly waiting for.

Over the years, Madhu has become the go-to person for anything related to this art of silent storytelling.

Madhu, who hails from Warangal, was also initiated into miming in childhood itself through a performance in his school. And when he was asked to fill in at one of the impromptu sketches in another cultural programme, he found his calling. He then began training under P.  Nagabhushanam. “I also worked under Padmashri Niranjan Goswami and Tony Montanaro in the US who taught me the art of illusion in mime,” says Madhu, the founder of the Indian Mime Academy, who also teaches at CCRT and Film and Tele-vision Institute, Pune.

“Mime is the base of all performing arts. Before one speaks, the body moves. The idea is to help the kids express and explore an idea through the body,” he adds.

In one of his exercises, he told the children to pluck a fruit from an imaginary tree, and the way each child reacted was uniquely different.    

Mime has evolved over the years. Artistes today don’t wear the characteristic white make-up anymore. “The smear was used to be visible on stage even without electricity. But now with new lighting techniques, we can do without it,” he explains.

But how does a mime manage to hold the attention of the audience without a single word uttered? “Body language, in general, is integral to human communication. So even when it happens on the stage, most of us are likely to get immersed in it,” he says.