Section A) Summary and Thesis
- Why should pantomime be the first stage in actor’s training?
Pantomime is essential, for it encourages crucial movements, highlighted gestures and animated expressions. Most physical action without vocal expression is the foundation in order to delineate the character traits through effective characterizations. Thus, pantomime is the incipient exercise and primary training of a novice actor.
- The three form of nonverbal communication that people use daily
We used facial expressions, gestures, and body language constantly.
- Rules for walking, sitting, and falling onstage
- Walking
Keep good posture, make sure your shoulders are square and your chest is high.
Move straight and keep the silhouette narrow, both your body and arms should swing. Bear in mind that your movement should be simple, unperturbed, and rhythmical.
Keep the axis of your body directly over your feet [sic]. Turn from head to feet rather than turning your heels, and make sure you didn’t cross one foot over another. Transfer your weight from one foot to another.
Don’t always stare at the ground. Avoid elongated strides and scurrying.
- Sitting
Decide the route and the chair you are going to sit, take note that you have to place your calf against the chair and sit.
Cling your spine to the chair back and form a right angle with your seat. You would often sit forward if your character is doddered and lamed.
Usually, your hands should rest on your laps, folding your arms on your chest would make you feel beset since your breath were quelled.
Do not let your leg straddle across your other leg. Let them spray apart. Rest your hand or elbow on your laps is possible if you want to showcase certain psyche or aura.
Your chest would lead your rising, keep your weight balanced on the balls of your feet. Step forward with one foot, serving as a leverage. Keep your chest high, holding the arm of the chair while standing up only showed that you are doddered and haggard.
- Falling
Firstly, split your body into different sections: head, torso, arms, hips, thighs, and legs-and all the lower part of the body.
Secondly, control the falling of your torso, make sure you are close to the ground when you fall.
Lastly, land with the soft part of your body, rather than bony projections (for example your ribs).
- Qualities of object portrayed in pantomime
It is essential to expound the size, shape and texture of the object, by doing so the audiences could have a lucid imagery of the object. Therefore, you can tell the approximate height, width, and length of that object and the shape (it can be circle, square, oval, triangle and etc.) by observing the actor’s gesticulations. Somehow understanding the texture of the imagined object (whether the object is ruffled, sandy, smooth, pebbly, and etc.) can help to comprehend the traits.
In addition to the ostensive touch of the imaginary object, the concept of resistance and placement should also be entailed. Resistance referred to the firmness and solidity of an object, another factor is your response after holding the object (e.g. the deformation of a sponge, the moment you ran into a wall). Placement, as the name implied, is the location of objects. Your motion can be carried out throughout your different points (e.g. picking a flower from the ground, knowing the arrangement of imaginary objects).
- Difference between mime and pantomime
Basically, pantomime demonstrated a particular action, while a mime showcased a theme. Secondly, Pantomime used only imaginary objects, no sound is used and the plot of the pantomime cannot deviate from reality. In comparison to pantomimes, mime artists may apply part or all of the body to become an object and opine an idea. In addition to that, non verbal sound (like cacophony) and unrestricted imagination is applicable in the mime performance.
Lastly, pantomime is about a specific action, whereas mime proffered an idea, theme that can be expressed in simple terms, for example solitude, ennui, and etc.
- What features of the face are most important in expressing ideas and emotions? How do mimes emphasize these features?
Facial expression is an integral part of mime acing when it comes to communicating emotions, mime usually highlight their eye and mouths with makeup to exaggerate the facial expression. These emotions and countenance should be easy for audiences to interpret, like happiness, angriness, sadness and etc.
- Why do mimes use gestures?
Mime actors have to convey symbolic meaning without vocal expressions and mime is abstract and stylized; the mime performance gives an illusion of a physical action in our daily life. In order to showcase the meaning of a particular action, the actor has to let it become exaggerated.
(The usage of gestures can hypostatize and pass the information directly without speaking anything. Therefore, we could compare it to the symbolic movement onstage)
- Name and explain some typical mime actions.
Mime walk
Your feet should open at a 45-degree, when you lift your left foot, your right arm should swing forward. The weight of you’re your body would exchange between different heels, repeat this action.
Mime walk provided the imagery of normal walking, though the lifting and swinging of your legs and arms, the oscillation of these parts engendered the concept of mime walking in the audience’s mind.
Rope pull
Stand the left foot forward, you have to reach each hand (left hand first, then right hand. Let go of right hand, repeat this action) to drag the rope, this uniform and continuous action is unadulteratedly another example of mime mirage-image, showing only the allusion and metaphor of rope pulling.
Climb up and down stairs
An actor may use the first mime walk to go up stairs, grasp the handrail of the identical height with your eye level. Bring your hands down pass your torso (let it past your hip), when you have to come down the stairs, grasp the rail and move your right arms beside you about mid-chest level. When you bring your arms up, reach your elbows out, this allows you to keep the rail straight. By making this action a continuum, the audience could picture of the illusive action of climbing up and down stairs using these prototypal movements which suggested the rationale of this motion.
*Note: this is a refined writing of the conventional mime actions, ladder climb wasn’t included.
Section B Discussing Ideas
- Why is a responsive, expressive body important to an actor?
A responsive and expressive body is always an integral part onstage. Firstly, most drama school offered compulsory courses like fencing and dancing in order to develop the candidates’ physical coordination, some candidates therefore overcome the congenital clumsiness. Good coordination enabled the performer onstage to move the body as a whole, making it more expressive and impressive in front of your audiences. Your movement is one of the criteria in which your audiences could perceive your character’s personality. In most cases, the world will take you at your “face value.” You are judged first by your appearance and manner and later by what you say and how you say it [sic].
- Discuss the importance of gestures onstage, explain why it is sometimes better to make no gesture at all.
Gesture (the movement of par of your body) helps to illustrate ideas or emotions, through nimble and dexterous movement, the implication of the body language (movements) can be communicated clearly. Furthermore, gestures reflected the status, personality, motifs of the character (e.g. a boy frisking in his schoolbag for his essay, his face stiffened with apprehensiveness).
When the actor hasn’t had a clear purpose in moving the plot forward or showing certain things, any gestures or embellishment would be superfluous as it demonstrated no ideas. It would be spontaneous when such things happened in from of the audiences, it is important that these meaningless gestures should be avoided.
- Characterization in pantomime demands both imitation and imagination. Discuss the importance of each in character portrayal.
In pantomime performance, you have to accumulate the countenance of others and observe their facial expressions in highly emotional situations. Your memory of the facial expression allowed you to perform agilely onstage, avoiding many maladroit expressions. In order to have good characterization you also have to surmise of the character, placing the character in the context of reality, thus, for an actor he/she has to use his/her imagination to place and maintain him/her in the part he/she is playing [sic].
- Mime does not imitate physical action as it occurs in real life. Instead, it gives an illusion of that action, discuss why this key feature of mime appeals to audiences.
As mentioned before, the stylized and abstract action of mime showcased only the idea of the physical action, the motion of the actor served as a dose of catalyst of dramatic and emotional effect, expressing both symbolic and literal ideas. The deviation from exactness allowed the audiences to have universal interpretation, while making it simple for them to understand.