A mime is a terrible thing to waste.
Marcel MarceauRead
I have designed my style pantomimes as white ink drawings on black backgrounds, so that man's destiny appears as a thread lost in an endless labyrinth. I have tried to shed some gleams of light on the shadow of man startled by his anguish.
Interpretation
Marcel Marceau's quote emphasizes the complexity of human existence and the search for meaning amidst struggle.
In this quote, Marcel Marceau reflects on the intricacies of life, likening it to a labyrinth where individuals often feel lost. His use of imagery—white drawings on black backgrounds—symbolizes the contrast between light and darkness in human experience, suggesting that while there is anguish, there is also a possibility of hope and clarity amidst confusion.
In practice
An art exhibition could feature this quote to enhance the theme of the complexity of life.
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.
The landscape painter must walk in the fields with a humble mind. No arrogant man was ever permitted to see Nature in all her beauty.
To create anything — whether a short story or a magazine profile or a film or a sitcom — is to believe, if only momentarily, you are capable of magic. These essays are about that magic — which is sometimes perilous, sometimes infectious, sometimes fragile, sometimes failed, sometimes infuriating, sometimes triumphant, and sometimes tragic. I went up there. I wrote. I tried to see.
Poetry is a mixture of common sense, which not all have, with an uncommon sense, which very few have.
Architecture is really about well-being. I think that people want to feel good in a space ... On the one hand it's about shelter, but it's also about pleasure.
I truly believe that the job of an actor and the drive of an actor is simulating the internal journey in life which is to get deeper and deeper into our understanding of who we are.
All of my knowledge, of both science and religion, I incorporate into the classical tradition of my painting.
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