Miming

Mime

What do you know about mime?

Mime is one of the most ancient forms of theatre, appearing around the time of the Greek tragedies. On the other words, mime is the theatrical technique of suggesting action, character, or emotion without words, using only gesture, expression, and movement. It is one of the non-verbal communications.

Miming appears very simple but it takes a lot of skill and practice to make it appear realistic. Mime study can be very useful, not only for actors and other performers, but for anyone who needs to communicate clearly. Use our body to talk, not mouth. Instead, use facial expressions and make use of our whole body to do the 'talking'. Use a mirror (or an audience) to assess what movements are the most successful in conveying emotions, feelings, attitudes and reactions. A full length mirror is a necessity for beginners but bear in mind the mirror is a friend you will need to leave behind at performance time. A video camera, if available, is also an invaluable tool to utilize.

For our Tutorial Week 3, we were asked to prepare a three minute mime (non-verbal communication) of a situation of our choice. It was difficult for us because we need to brainstorm for the storyline so that the audience will understand the message that we want to deliver.

My group has done a mime entitled “Love Story”. We meant to name the title like that because we thought that the class will guess what does the title actually means. 

This was the mime video by our group. Enjoy!

This is some of the information about mime that we can use it as teaching and learning activity in class. 

Mime can be a useful activity in encouraging and aiding students to:

• develop their acting skills in terms of body language (posture, movements, gestures, etc);
• gain a greater awareness of the importance of body language as a form of communication;
• develop more confidence performing in front of others.

Students can focus on the following language skills:

• listening: viewing and responding to videos;
• speaking: planning a performance with a partner, discussing videos, reflecting on their, performance and/or commenting on the performance of others;
• writing: reflecting on their performance;
• reading: reading the reflections of other students;
• vocabulary: learning key terms like facial expression, gesture, pose and exaggerated.