Real People: Mime sees resurgence of art form

$180 for teens; $210 for adults

Théâtre du Rêve, Goat Farm Arts Center

1200 Foster St., Atlanta

404-875-3829, www.theatredureve.com

Compared to music and dance, mime doesn’t have quite the same dedicated following. But Chick Durrett-Smith is doing her part to introduce more people to what she deems an important and overlooked art form.

The Decatur director, choreographer and performer was one of the local actors who kept Atlanta’s mime scene buzzing back in the ’80s. In those days, Durrett-Smith found plenty of opportunities to don a black outfit and paint her face white to entertain crowds at both public and private events.

“Mime really came onto the scene in the 1970s when Shields and Yarnell (a mime team with a TV show) brought it to the forefront,” said Durrett-Smith. “When my husband and I first came to Atlanta in 1980, there was a great pool of talent in the mime field. People used mimes for everything; if there was an event, they needed a mime. For a long time, Georgia-Pacific had a lunchtime arts series, and I was their mime - I was even in their promotional materials. The Atlanta Mime Festival was held for years at Colony Square until the late 1980s.”

Miming was so popular that it may have inspired many people to try it, but without any training. “The result was a lot of people were just mimicking what they saw, and miming got a bad rap,” said Durrett-Smith. “But I think now, people are beginning to come back to it. There’s a lot more respect for what people like Charlie Chaplin and Marcel Marceau did.”

While teaching summer camp at Théâtre du Rêve on Atlanta’s westside this year, Durrett-Smith incorporated mime principles into her courses with 7- to 15-year-olds.

“I think mime benefits all of the performing arts,” she explained. “You learn to speak with your body. The first thing we learn is how to stand. There’s a neutral position from which you move body parts from where they are normally to somewhere else. As you do these things, you can show something happening that’s not really there. Then we’ll go on to showing emotions without the face. I have a neutral mask we wear so the body communicates the message, not the face. From there, we work up to illusions - pulling the rope, climbing the ladder.”

The response to the mime activities was so positive that Durrett-Smith has been asked to create mime classes for teens and adults this fall.

“There are a lot of people interested in bringing it back,” she said. “Whether it will become a sensation like it was, I don’t know. But it’s a great technique for story telling; it can embellish anything you do. It’s a beautiful art form.”