Thursday, 18 October 2012


We then watched 5 of clips of mime starting with a mime called "Tape Face" Which was a contempery, silent, comedy styled mime which used music as the theme of some of his mimes. His communication with the audience is clear and very to the point he also had a volunteer jump up to the stage which proved very funny. Tape Face uses youth based mime and had great timings with the music when he had his oven mitts sing. As his name suggests Tape face has a bit of tape over his mouth which means he requires alot of facial expression to be used. With the use of puppeteering he gave the oven mitts a life of their own which helped to engage the audience even more with the added help of eye interaction with both the audience and the scene he was performing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50JbiZEWq1Y

The second clip of the 5 was a sketch done by Rowan Atkinson as he was portraying a janitor who stumbles upon an invisible drum kit a very comedic silent piece that requires great timing with the sound effects as the drums, the bells hit in the sound of the national an fume the sound of a cat getting stepped on followed by 3 blind mice and finished with a flying screeching and hissing cat who lands on a symbol or into a gong.  He performed with a great sense of where every thing is spaced. He kept his facial expressions natural and body language was clear and kept eye contact with the objects in the mime. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJQNKIePGMQ

Video 3 was of a mime called Le’ncontro Con Garance who performed a Situation type mime. This mime worked with silence and music when he was miming it made you feel like you where the towns people watching the piece. He describes the events through mime whilst greatly exaggerating his movements of what happened. He causes the audience to laugh as he openly mocks the people in the situation. His skills through the whole piece are not moving, his facial expressions, over exaggeration, his multi rolling and his mimic or impersonation performances. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FA_Pv0ylIY

The next piece stars Tony Montanaro uses subtle mime comedy with a lot of sound effects and great focus on the audience. His facial expressions and physical interactions with an invisible person where well constructed. Although not very funny this mime covers series mime. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA0v6Xp7CIU 

The next piece was drive by mime where a mime took a member of the audience up and took him for a drive in his car and although it was silent the over exaggerated facial expressions and sound effects used really tied this piece together. The communication between him and his audience was clear and direct. And when things didn’t go to plan he worked around the volunteer showing great improvisation skills. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPMBV3rd_hI

In mime we developed a mime performance and applied music with a mime how the music could influence the performance. E.g. Tempo, Mood, Support, Comedy, Styles.

Today’s lesson involved practicing our mimes and to act like the ranking of a card e.g. Jack would be like a noble man or government member where as a 3 would be a peasant or a thief. The feed back I received from the second years where

Toby: Over exaggerate the facial expressions, acknowledge the audience and keep my elbow in the case when I was getting strangled.

Oliver: It’s good but slow down the movements don’t rush

Jo’s: make the facial expressions bigger and don’t drag it on.

My evaluation on my mime is I hope I did well and I was disappointed that I didn’t get as many laughs as I expected.

My mime started out with being lost trying to find somewhere by following directions I then having found a landmark or pointer from the map proceeded that way then fell over a cat and found my self in front of “Pandora’s box” when I first opened the box I discovered a blizzard inside it was cold and a real struggle to close. Finding myself in bewilderment I decided to open it again only to find a severed hand inside which I shut abruptly because I felt sick. After I had closed it a few seconds the box began to shake and as I opened it I saw the hand beginning to dance to which I closed it again. Not believing what I saw I opened the box again and watched it dance before realising what was happening I close it. I then wanted to see if the hand was still dancing so I opened the box and looked deep inside but it had disappeared which is when my nose started to drip blood (I used eye expressions to describe the confusion I felt) which stopped on the box falling shut. I then thought “what a crazy box this is” as I hit the lid twice. I then heard a voice inside say “coming, coming I have something to tell you” on which I opened the box and got my hand possessed by a puppet who seemed to be into phantom menace/opera music I was laughing away the fear and surprise…. until it turned round to face me then I got scared as it swayed back and forth like a cobra about to strike. It suddenly attacks strangling me I then tried to force it away before hitting with the lid of the box to which my real hand returned.  But as my gaze shifted to the contents of the box from hell I began to tremble terrified as I saw an evil unknown to me (use of red light gel and torch) then my heart stops beating I try to restart it hitting it hard and faster I then fall to the floor and a witches laugh echoed out from the box until I slammed it shut in her nose to which she cried “oh my nose” and I held up a sign saying “that’s enough Pandora” (this is written from the point of view of the character who experienced these events)

Saturday, 6 October 2012

Next up was different types of mime

 Isolation mime 

Physical body mime to move a single part of the body whilst the rest stayed still (robot like)

Mirroring mime

one person would mime a natural movement then the other would do it in a robot or strict army like style where they could only move in straight line or square movements.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7ULR-yfNnk

Cool Mime! Tyson Eberly Mime Performance Part 2

Love Mime? This is the second part of my Mime Performance i gave in Japan in






Alive hands and shoes

an exercise where an object that has no control of its own gains such qualities like it had a personality and a brain unseen and was able to control itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79KsitsRxK4&feature=fvwrel
Andrew Vinokurov as the MimeAndrew Vinokurov as the Mimeby theloudmime21

after that was Musical inspiration

we thought about what images came to mind and what mood the music brought, stories/memories
we had to associate to the music and the images that came to mind for example: the first thing that comes to mind with the amazing grace song is scotland slavery and oddly slow dancing where as a faster song would bring fighting conflict or the romba to find.
finally back on after my internet connection went haywire couldn't connect for a while so there may be some things missing i have to type the second i get home or i will forget like have done for most of the weeks work but heres what i have written down:

so we did abit of trip work for childrens theatre or a panto like situation with the reactions to the trip worked in e.g. shock, vocal reaction, physical or expressive reaction. the reactions we worked most on was confusion, shock, annoyance and many others in this piece we also had a narrator who would ask the audience to warn anyone about to fall over; for example the loose floorboard which the first added characters would miss and then the last person would fall over it (alternatively the first added characters could fall and the last who isn't paying attention could step over it which would also add comedy value) added characters could be of any number but lower the better as if there are too many it could become boring for the audience as the audience interaction is very important. The situation to what the people fall over could change for example tree roots, floorboards, logs, shoelaces. In a earlier exercise we had to react to the situation of a kingdom where it was illegal to tie your shoe laces out in public and the audience had to warn them but you also had to pretend you didn't know the audience was there at first.
day 7 we started off the day with LRC eduction which was a long progress that took a long time because we had to do a couple of tests to see what to get put in for the English and Maths tests after that we did some more mime this time we had narrator and kid involvement like the narrator told the kids to worn someone of something but only a couple of people where paying attention and got the message then the last complained when they didn't the demonstration for this was the narrator telling the kids about a loose floor board and to tell the cast to watch out the first two got the message then the last person didn't and got upset. we also dug deeper into the trips by giving an invisible objects to trip over as well as some objects to avoid before tripping over.

Thursday, 13 September 2012

day 6 started of with some drama and focus games the first is where you have to point at someone and say your own name if you said the persons name or anybodies besides your own you get labeled the fool till someone else does it. After that we did location, job and death which is a game that focuses on mime work followed by park bench which is an improvisation game of which I managed to invent something of the top of my head in less time than usual.

 We then had Wayne for a bit of vocal and breathing exercises. I learned that its easier to breath whilst lying down we followed it up with singing tunes whilst leaning back on high notes and forward with short ones.

 We then had a look around the college fair and ended the day with more mime work with Tom. We covered moving mime objects like a table during this I learned if you don't focus you could have real difficulty making it believable. We then did my favourite mime THE INVISIBLE SUITCASE named such for the invisible weight (or lack of weight) inside it. We then did a mime where on person tried lifting the heavy case whilst the other comes over picks it up as though its empty and tries to work off with it but the case won't let them then a third person walks in with a don't be an idiots attitude and walks of with it whilst the others are like awww you spoiled are trick.

13/09/2012

Wednesday, 12 September 2012


day 5 in the morning we did children theartre where we discussed Narritive which is in short the children's stories eg fairy tails and the standard story lines:romance, revenge,quest, ect. in every story we have the 4 main characters :

the hero

the sidekick

the damsel

and the villian

in small groups we devised short play's in which we had to perform whilst thinking at what is suitable for the children to see and hear doing so we learnt:

the use of language/joke suitable for the kids
the clearness and projection of the lines spoken to the audiance
the exaggerated tones and expressions
the importance for the audiance to understand the plot, what's being said and what ever else that's going on
we also learnt that it was harder than we thought to creat a play than improvising lines.

And then we did MIME where we had to use only are hands to create a mime and then build a scene in pairs around whatever mime was devised. the important things to remember about mime is to lock onto the objected your miming to look at and make it believable and clear to the audiance.

Apple task: we had to use our imagination to create the illusion of eatting an invisable apple. how we picked the aplle up eat it and handled the apple is very important.

String task: in this excercise we had to mime picking up the string and tieing a knot in it again it was important to make it clear and believable eg tieing it slowly or clear movements to create the illusion of tieing the knot.

11/9/2012

day 4 finished the personal paperwork at last then physical warm up time with Tom biit of running round then
spiderman posses but after that I almost lost my legs after the second set of excercises my hamstrings are not yet strong enough to take something this intense but im not giving up i did what i could then trust and team building excercises Ty and me we trust each other then it was Chris and me back to back to stand up and then to feel the vibe. of each others breathing through the back. next one i wouldn't be able to do so i sat out then trouble stuck as Kay had an accident I took her to the porters and stayed with her to make sure she was ok I may not really know her or anyone that well but a friends a friend and i don't want to see them upset or cry let alone hurt so i stuck by her side and helped where i could in the end the took her to the hospital and i returned to TT's class where we had a lesson on childrens theatre we did some charactor excercises where we were adults and children Ronnie's was rather disturbing and i went FRED which isn't a good thing at all. All in all a very eventful day full of emotions and feelings i really hope our group will get closer it'll be great if we all hanged out together.

10/9/2012