Mime Drama Quotes

The Conqueror Worm Lo! 'tis a gala night Within the lonesome latter years! An angel throng, bewinged, bedight In veils, and drowned in tears, Sit in a theatre, to see A play of hopes and fears, While the orchestra breathes fitfully The music of the spheres. Mimes, in the form of God on high, Mutter and mumble low, And hither and thither fly— Mere puppets they, who come and go At bidding of vast formless things That shift the scenery to and fro, Flapping from out their Condor wings Invisible Wo! That motley drama—oh, be sure It shall not be forgot! With its Phantom chased for evermore, By a crowd that seize it not, Through a circle that ever returneth in To the self-same spot, And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot. But see, amid the mimic rout A crawling shape intrude! A blood-red thing that writhes from out The scenic solitude! It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs The mimes become its food, And the angels sob at vermin fangs In human gore imbued. Out—out are the lights—out all! And, over each quivering form, The curtain, a funeral pall, Comes down with the rush of a storm, And the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, "Man," And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

Lo! ’tis a gala night Within the lonesome latter years! An angel throng, bewinged, bedight In veils, and drowned in tears, Sit in a theatre, to see A play of hopes and fears, While the orchestra breathes fitfully The music of the spheres. Mimes, in the form of God on high, Mutter and mumble low, And hither and thither fly — Mere puppets they, who come and go At bidding of vast formless things That shift the scenery to and fro, Flapping from out their Condor wings Invisible Wo! That motley drama! — oh, be sure It shall not be forgot! With its Phantom chased forever more, By a crowd that seize it not, Through a circle that ever returneth in To the self-same spot, And much of Madness and more of Sin And Horror the soul of the plot. But see, amid the mimic rout, A crawling shape intrude! A blood-red thing that writhes from out The scenic solitude! It writhes! — it writhes! — with mortal pangs The mimes become its food, And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs In human gore imbued. Out — out are the lights — out all! And over each quivering form, The curtain, a funeral pall, Comes down with the rush of a storm, And the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, “Man,” And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

Coach Henley gave his whistle two short blasts to get the team moving. The Westerly Women ambled over and formed a half circle. The Mothers stamped their feet on the bleachers, trying to build excitement for a game that would unfold with the same painful drama as a mime’s funeral. The opposing team hadn’t even bothered to warm up. Their shortest player was six feet tall and had hands the size of dinner plates.

Classical education was only half the old system of European education--below it and above it there was the religious education that was common to the whole people, and the higher theological education that was peculiar to the clergy, who provided the majority of the teachers in both the other departments of education. Now the lowest level of this structure, which has been least studied and least regarded, was the most important of them all. It is true that it differed considerably in different parts of Europe, but for the religious rather than material reasons. In Protestant Europe it was founded on the Bible and the catechism, whereas in Catholic Europe it was based on the liturgy and on religious art and drama and mime, which made the Church the school of the people. But in either case it provided a system of common beliefs and moral standards, as well as the archetypal patterns of world history and sacred story which formed the background of their spiritual world.

God created the world in six days and it is difficult for us to perceive the greatness of the primary information, unless we understand a work of inner transformation or the need for a more secure future for the next generation! The immediate answer is cold and false and it has a tinge of emotional therapy. Only the inner acceptance of reality has a dose of pure truth and can generate the echo of the self that may give us a middle way in our own vision of how to avoid the evil that extends and takes over the world! Is the deceptive tranquility of the silence that conquers us, a collective passivity that reigns over the weak, frightened and cowardly people, fueled by mediocrity and the vain hope into a better future. What happens now in this world is an ancient Greek tragedy, in which we like actors that can no longer tell the stage from reality. It is like in a therapy-drama, seen as a solution for those who had traumatic experiences in their life and cannot communicate through words. It is those who choose a non-verbal language and who saw their hands in desperation, as they can no longer articulate words. They communicate like primitive people after the discovery of fire. Others are playing their role in a theater of the absurd, like some amateur actors or as mimes in a stand-up comedy show where self-deprecation is adored. Depending on each one’s perception power, different ways of expression are chosen, perhaps more superficial and well-anchored in the context of the drama we are living to the full. It is a false sense of inner security, a mere relief valve for our emotional expression and a recipe for disaster! Why is it that nothing good and fair happens in this world anymore? Is the evil perpetuating itself in shapes and patterns we are no longer capable to distinguish from the good and the right? Why are we deceiving ourselves? “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” But who, how, why, for whom, by whom, what, and in particular when ? Lucian Ciuchita

The notion, popularized by classicist and romanticist critics alike, of the Attic theatre as the perfect example of a national theatre, and of its audiences as realizing the ideal of a whole people united in support of art, is a falsification of historical truth.33 The festival theatre of Athenian democracy was certainly no ‘people’s theatre’ —the German classical and romantic theorists could only represent it as such, because they conceived the theatre to be an educational institution. The true ‘people’s theatre’ of ancient times was the mime, which received no subvention from the state, in consequence did not have to take instructions from above, and so worked out its artistic principles simply and solely from its own immediate experience with the audiences. It offered its public not artistically constructed dramas of tragi-heroic manners and noble or even sublime personages, but short, sketchy, naturalistic scenes with subjects and persons drawn from the most trivial, everyday life. Here at last we have to do with an art which has been created not merely for the people but also in a sense by the people. Mimers may have been professional actors, but they remained popular and had nothing to do with the educated élite, at least until the mime came into fashion. They came from the people, shared their taste and drew upon their common sense. They wanted neither to educate nor to instruct, but to entertain their audience. This unpretentious, naturalistic, popular theatre was the product of a much longer and more continuous development, and had to its credit a much richer and more varied output than the official classical theatre; unfortunately, this output has been almost completely lost to us. Had these plays been preserved, we should certainly take quite a different view of Greek literature and probably of the whole of Greek culture from that taken now. The mime is not merely much older than tragedy; it is probably prehistoric in origin and directly connected with the symbolic-magical dances, vegetation rites, hunting magic, and the cult of the dead. Tragedy originates in the dithyramb, an undramatic art form, and to all appearances it got its dramatic form—involving the transformation of the performers into fictitious personages and the transposition of the epic past into present —from the mime. In tragedy, the dramatic element certainly always remained subordinate to the lyrical and didactic element; the fact that the chorus was able to survive shows that tragedy was not exclusively concerned to get dramatic effect and so was intended to serve other ends than mere entertainment.