Mime

📖 In short

Mime is an art where a story is told without a single word! The actor uses only their face, hands and body to express ideas and feelings. A mime often wears striped clothes and paints their face white.

🤩 Did you know?

Mime was very popular between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries.
The actor Charlie Chaplin was a star of silent films.
A mime needs lots of practice with body movements.
The French actor Marcel Marceau is one of the most famous mimes.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 An invisible wall

One of a mime's most famous acts is pretending to be trapped in an invisible glass box, putting their palms on the hidden wall and feeling it, so we can almost see the wall!

🔍 A language everyone understands

Mime needs no language, so people from every country understand it. Laughter, tears, fear and surprise show on the face in a way everyone understands.

💡 Facial expressions

The actor's white face makes the movements of their eyes, mouth and eyebrows very clear, so the audience sees their feelings even from far away.

🎯 The mime game

You can play with your friends: one of you acts something out without speaking, like brushing teeth or fishing, and the others try to guess what it is.

🧩 Test yourself

1 What does the actor not use in mime?

2 Why do people from every country understand mime?

3 Which picture shows “Mime”?

🎨 Discover more

📷 Picture sources: Wikimedia Commons

Bill Golladay · CC BY-SA 4.0