LONDON INTERNATIONAL MIME FESTIVAL 2011
15 – 30 January 2011
Various venues
“The freedom to use one’s imagination and the chance not to be fettered by the limitation of language,” is what makes visual theatre so appealing according to Joseph Seelig, a co-director of the London International Mime Festival. Over the course of the last two weeks of January I saw several festival productions that bore witness to the truth of his words. In some ways the association of the festival with “mime” is an unfortunate one. That theatrical discipline has become so totally associated with the playful silence of genius Marcel Marceau that the mere utterance of the word inspires images of men with white faces pretending to go up and down in elevators, or polishing imaginary silver. The overriding theme of the festival however, is not mime in this sense, but “visual theatre” a catchall term that covers theatre not reliant on text: circus, puppetry, object theatre, physical theatre and live art.
I first got the bug for visual theatre when I saw Krzysztof Kieslowski’s cinematic masterpiece La Double Vie de Véronique. Some of the great centerpieces of the film feature puppetry and anyone that has had seen it will be able to testify to power of that artform. La Maldicion de Poe, which I reviewed extensively in this publication was a real powerhouse of raw feeling; puppetry at some of its staggering best. A performance by Les Anticlastes, a french company of puppeteers was an altogether more surreal experience. The show, Hilum, was based largely around the spin cycles of an ageing washing machine – if that sounds outright bizarre, then you won’t be far away from accurately imagining the show. Puppets made from skeletal hands, giant thumbs and old rags were manipulated in a world redolent of a disused curiosity shop. 
A throbbing and insistent electronic soundtrack had me on edge as we creaked through the twisted world created in the ICA theatre. Ultimately less plot driven than the Poe piece, it was a tour through the mind of creator Patrick Sims; disquieting, at times disturbing, but fantastical and compelling. Objects came to life and I could relate to them even though the bizarre logic of their existence folded into nothingness when the lights came up at the end of the show.
Clowning was the centrepiece of La Porta (The Door) as imagined by Kai Leclerc, Bernard Stockli and Andreas Manz three Swiss Italian clowns who make up a company called Compagnia 2+1. The heart of the show was a red door that stood centre stage, over which they were all fighting for ownership rights. Each time the door opened a different world could be seen on the other side, and their characters were struggling to deal with the unforseen elements those worlds would throw at them. Sadly the execution was weak, and production values simply too low for the piece take me to the other imaginative realms the clowns so clearly wanted to create. The production felt like a mere setting for clowning set pieces, juggling, low level illusion and slapstick.
What was fascinating was the question an answers session after the performance. What is perhaps generally not realised about clowns is exactly how seriously they take their work, and how philosophically they see their craft. In full makeup and still in character they attempted to answer ridiculous questions posed by posing adults trying to understand the art of clowning. One plucky young girl asked, “is that your real hair”, and she was invited to get her response by tugging. Then she asked, “are you real clowns?” which had all three rather lost for words, and of course went direct to issue the adults could not even begin to truly tease out. “We are trying, every day we are trying” was the response that seemed to me to be given with a twinge of sadness.
The highlight of the festival for me was Le Jardin (The Garden) by Atelier Lefeuvre & André. The circus skills based show was set around the intriguing relationship between two gardeners, one of whom seemed to be in a position of total dominance over the other. They performed feats of skill using improvised implements such as hosing, a wheel barrow, and oranges. 
They were presented with a combination of music and lighting that gave the piece a truly cinematic scope. The physical skills are of course possessed by many who have worked in circus, but the genius of this show was their ability to keep us guessing at the true nature of their wordless union, and to seamlessly flow through the garden setting to the physical performance.
“Language is very important” said Joseph, “but visual theatre capitalizes on theatrical possibilities such as movement and space”, possibilities that are often under-realised in theatre based on powerful oratory. The shows I saw without exception sought to transport audiences to places we are not accustomed to seeing on the London stage. The sheer inventiveness of the minds at work as well as the physical capabilities of the performers should be enough to animate and excite even the most rational and theory-weary LSE student. I am already excited for 2012.
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