The international Theatre Institute (Unesco) proclaimed 1998 as the year of the mime, in commemoration of Etienne Decroux's birthday one hundred years ago. He was the French master of the " mime corporel " .
13 November 1998 will be the international day dedicated to the mime.
To commemorate the 1OOth anniversary of the birth of Etienne Decroux, the I.T.I. would like to invite as many as possible to organise mime activities in their respective country throughout 1998.
Jetty Roels and Herman Verbeeck from the Flemisch centre of I.T.I. are initiators of this project. Roels is co-ordinator in the exchange of international contacts and information about Etienne Decroux and his students.
This article concerning his work is avalable for those wanting to translate the same into their respective languages and publish it.
CENTENNIAL ETIENNE DECROUX
The international Theatre Institute (Unesco) proclaimed 1998 as the year of the mime, in commemoration of Etienne Decroux's birthday one hundred years ago. He was the French master of the " mime corporel " .
13 November 1998 will be the international day dedicated to the mime.
To commemorate the 1OOth anniversary of the birth of Etienne Decroux, the I.T.I. would like to invite as many as possible to organise mime activities in their respective country throughout 1998.
These activities are meant to promote not only Etienne Decroux and his work but also the mime and mime artist in general. During 1998 each opportunity should be used to bring the mime to the public all around the world.
It is important not to forget that the mime has a close connection with the physical and experimental theatre, with forms of butoh and comtemporary dance, aspect that can also be highlighted.
ETIENNE DECROUX
One hundred years ago, on the 19th of July 1898, Etienne Decroux was born in Paris. Not so long ago he died there on the 12th of March 1991. Nearly 93 years old.
Decroux founded the "mime corporel", or "mime pur" as he called it himself later.
He formed thousands of students all over the world. Some of the most famous are Jean Louis Barrault, Marcel Marceau and Raymond Devos.
Already during his lifetime Decroux became a legend that caused a lot of misunderstandings and mystifications.
To commemorate this centennial anniversary the international Theatre Institute has (Unesco) has proclamed 1998 as the year of the Mime.
International day of the mime : 13th novembre 1998
In 1956 he drew up himself an extremely simple curriculum vitae :
"Decroux, Etienne Marcel. Born for an architectural career.
School-certificate at 12. Until 1914 : butcher's boy, waggon repairer, plumber, hospital attendant. As he had a commitment to politics he decided to take a voice training course. In 1923, after examinations, he was admitted at the school of Jacques Copeau."
At the age of 25 Decroux attended the first year at the Ecole du Vieux-Colombier directed by the French theatre renovator Jacques Copeau.
At the end of that year he saw a performance by senior students, the so-called "Masks". The nude actors played with unexpressive masks covering their faces. With their bodies they mimed elementary dramatical events, enriched by clapping of hands and feet, and vocal sounds.
Decroux was so impressed by this performance that it changed his life completely.
So his curriculum goes on :
" From 1925 until 1950 actor in spoken drama to earn his life.
From 1923 he did nearly permanent research on the elementary movement in classical dance. He invented a kind of "mime corporel ".
Performances with his company in Paris and foreign countries.
The " mime corporel " (naked body, veiled face) practised by Copeau was still embryonic and merely a minor study for the speaking actor."
And Decroux concludes: " His ideal : " rien dans les mains, rien dans les poches ". (Nothing in the hands, nothing in the pockets).
Decroux played as an actor in the companies of Louis Jouvet and Gaston Baty and worked during eight years in the " Theâtre de l'Atelier" de Charles Dullin. During his whole life Decroux admired Jouvet and Dullin.
He played supporting roles in about 35 films : more important roles he had in pictures by Jacques and Pierre Prévert. He played Jean Louis Barrault's father, the old Deburau in the well-known film " Les Enfants du Paradis" by Marcel Carné.
The French proverb " Le génie est une longue patience " (genius is a long time patience) is fully applicable to the artistic career of Etienne Decroux.
In his rare free moments he developed the " mime corporel " out of the exercises of the Vieux-Colombier. The " mime corporel " became a completely new dramatic art, a kind of mime-alphabet.
Two encounters would stimulate his work from the beginning. First of all with Suzanne Lodieu who became his faithful partner.
Without her " mime corporel " would not exist. " Suzanne in the beginning and Suzanne always ", he would say himself. She played his first mime, " La vie primitive " with him.
The second encounter was with Jean Louis Barrault, who apparently was very gifted on the physical level. Their cooperation brought up a lot. But Barrault left for military service and went his own way.
Decroux went on developing his art in solo-plays which he performed regularly in his dining-room for a very small audience of three to five persons.
In 1941 he opened his "Ecole de Mime" but soon was disappointed about the lability of his students. Being uncompromising, perseverant, intelligent, gifted with analytical sense and a believer in his mission, he overcame all problems.
During the last years of World War II he succeeded to develop a repertoire with a few faithful people among whom were his young son Maximilien and Eliane Guyon.
Suddenly, immediately after liberation, his work became famous.
On June 27th 1945 - Decroux was 47 - for the very first time a mime performance took place in a huge hall in Paris for more than one thousand spectators by E. Decroux, his students Eliane Guyon, and Jean Louis Barrault, who in the meantime became famous on the stage and in pictures.
Honorary president of this performance E.G. Craig wrote an enthousiastic article in a Paris weekly.
From then onwards Decroux's work accelerated. His authority increased.
There were performances in Paris for large audiences, and more long term students at his school. In the next years there were tours in Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Sweden, England, Israël.
His mimes are entitled : l'Usine, Les Arbres, Combat Antique, Duo Amoureux, Le passage des hommes sur la terre, Petits Soldats, Chirurgie Esthétique, Méditation, l'Esprit Malin, etc.
Together with these tours he taught as a visiting professor in these countries; so he was a visiting professor for one year at the school of the Piccolo Teatro di Milano and was the leader of a mime school and a company in New York during five years. In 1963 he returned to Paris, where he gave his trainings to thousands of young people of all nations in the small underground studio of his own house in Boulogne-Billancourt until a few years before he died.
Some persistent misunderstandings :
This opinion may be intensified by the picture "Les Enfants du Paradis' in which Decroux plays Barrault's father in the part of Pierrot-Deburau.
Justly this film got international success immediately after World War II but it became an unjust symbol for the rebirth of mimic art.
As to the contents there is no relationship between Decroux's "mime corporel" and Deburau's pantomime.
The art of E. Decroux has its roots in the renovation of the theatre of the 20th century.
His work can be situated among the work of Craig, Stanislawski, Meyerhold, Copeau, Artaud, Brecht, Grotowski...
This renovation was a search for the essence of this art in comparison with film, television, literature.
In the visual arts, e.g. Kandinsky, Mondrian, Brancusi and many others, parallels can be found with Decroux's art.
What he discovered for the actor is more " Bauhaus " than the experiments of Oskar Schlemmer, who was part of this movement.
In modern theatre three artists can be considered the pioneers of the physical expression and the language of movement for the drama-actor : Meyerhold from Russia with his biomechanics, E. Decroux from France with his " mime corporel" and J. Grotowski from Poland with his physical trainings.
Decroux took the seahorse as his logo, as it is just a torso. Neither arms nor legs. The articulation of the torso, i.e. of the spine, is the essence of the "mime corporel". Moreover the seahorse is a poetical animal : light, elegant, mysterious : it moves slowly in water, or is being moved by water. Symbol of Decroux's " Statuaire mobile".
Herman Verbeeck
Jetty Roels & Herman Verbeeck
PROJECT ETIENNE DECROUX International Theatre Instituut (Unesco)
Flemisch centre of I.T.I. p/a Berouw 55 9000 Gent Belgium
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