3 days with Norman Taylor... What is Mime!

The studio at Via della Chiesa... Florence.

In life you move through space... in theatre you move space. Like the genius of a sculpture when the statue appears to move - of course it doesn't move... it's the space around it which does. Like magic. To take the audience into an imagined world where they can dream.

Norman Taylor - master of movement, brilliant teacher, very funny, a musician with his timing... British. And we had a 3 day intensive workshop with him - How lovely indeed!

The word mime means to imitate... like a baby who watches for months the big people moving around until one day he mimes them... and walks. Or when someone has a distinct speech pattern and we adopt it when chatting. Quietly and subtly we are all mime artists... this is how children learn. The other day Ella, who is 5 years old, was sitting at the kitchen table eating sushi and drinking champagne when her mom found her - now that's mime, if a little scary xxx

When we were in the forest and on the beach, Giovanni said that when we watch waves, or look up at a tree... we change. We begin to imitate them, and this is mime. We are not the same when we look at the ocean. Mime is not theatre without words. Mime is theatre of movement and gesture... Giovanni would like to call it shape shifting but feels that might not be the best advertising platform for the website. This is therefore all theatre... Physical Theatre... who knows. I think its just theatre.

The gesture is born with the idea... that was what was so amazing about Normans classes - so much time was spent analysing what the students did whilst we listened to him... so what appeared to be 'getting sidetracked' was very much at the heart of the lesson... the analysis of everyday gesture. It was completely remarkable and totally fascinating. You don't have to make anything up - life is packed with good idea's - we have to learn to observe better! Norman kept saying... i'm not going to teach you anything you don't already know - you just don't know that you know it yet.

So, he taught us to row the boat, lift the bar weight, climb the wall, jump, cut the sugar cane, rake the grass, dig a hole... and throw the discus! By the end of the second day he took one of the girls in our class and asked her to do the movement of picking up the weight, without 'dropping' it and to move straight into the rowing the boat sequence. As she did he narrated... and his words informed her movement... You see it and move towards it, you accept it, you make it your own, you change and without dropping it... once you have accepted this path and made it your own, you are ready to steer your life along... as which point she pushed off in the boat sequence. It was profoundly moving and the mistakes didn't matter. The narrative and the sentiment of the movement brought a silence that left the audience awe struck for a moment in a brightly lit, heated little studio somewhere in Florence. It was wonderful.

Mama's Bakery from the courtyard - whose chocolate chip cookies have settled many a sugar low...

Don't look down, don't prepare, you are fine as you are, the floor is there. The space is what matters... Norman Taylor. Yay.