A mime is a terrible thing to waste.
Marcel MarceauRead
I started under my master, Etienne Decroux, who taught me a new grammar for mime he called statuary mime. This grammar brings style creations. Without it, no art survives.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of foundational techniques in the arts, specifically in mime, to ensure artistic expression and survival.
Marcel Marceau highlights the significance of mastering fundamental techniques and stylesβin this case, 'statuary mime'βas essential for any artistic endeavor to thrive. He credits his mentor, Etienne Decroux, for teaching him this grammar, suggesting that without a strong foundation, art cannot endure or develop in meaningful ways.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of training in the arts.
A mime is a terrible thing to waste.
In a clown, we see what we do that makes us laugh and cry. I kept the white face, the tradition of the Pierrot. My clown became a romantic and stylized figure. I wanted to be an abstract and concrete figure, a symbol of humanity.
Mime makes the invisible, visible and the visible, invisible.
I am a company in myself. My repertoire has become a bible for all mimes in the world.
When you're in a play, 50 percent is the genius of the actor, 50 percent is the genius of the author. When a mime is not perfect, you see nothing.
Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.
Writing is a lonely job. Even if a writer socializes regularly, when he gets down to the real business of his life, it is he and his type writer or word processor. No one else is or can be involved in the matter.
I'm not likely to forget where I've been and what I've done and learned. I think it's just as important to play new instruments as to play new pieces. The old ones are getting scarcer and the new ones more and more wonderful.
I would rather dance as a ballerina, though faultily, than as a flawless clown.
I am a creature of my pen. My pen is the best of me.
I write from this tight third-person viewpoint, where each chapter is seen through the eyes of one individual character. When I'm writing that character, I become that character and identify with that character.
We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience.
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