FAMED MIME TO PRESENT HIS SILENT WORLD AT UCI

Bert Houle, talking by phone from San Francisco, laughed about the loss of his voice due to a cold. This loss is not, however, expected to affect Houle’s performance when he takes to the stage at UC Irvine’s Fine Arts Theatre Saturday night. For Houle is a voiceless actor. A mime. The man Dance Magazine calls “an adorable clown.”

There was a time when the loss of his voice would have meant calling the understudy from the wings. That was during the 10 years Houle used his voice as well as his body, performing as a speaking actor in legitimate theater around the country. He was regarded by his peers as “an actor who moves well,” which meant getting roles that required natural grace and style, the ability to walk across the stage with flair, the kinetic sense many actors hope to acquire through training. He appeared in modern works, as well as in Shakespearean productions, playing Ariel, the airy spirit in “The Tempest,” and Feste, the clown in “Twelfth Night.”

Houle might still be a speaking actor had it not been for the suggestion of a friend that he study mime. Initially Houle was unconvinced. In fact, he didn’t even like mime. “I had seen it performed on television, and frankly, what I saw was grotesque,” he recalled.

At his friend’s urging, Houle applied for a Fulbright scholarship to study mime in Paris, center of some of the world’s finest teachers of the craft. He was awarded the Fulbright in 1967.

Houle said “it was extremely extraordinary to get funding usually given to scholars and academics working on some scientific project.” While in Paris, he applied for and was granted “an unprecedented” second year Fulbright to continue his mime studies.

In Paris, Houle studied with Etienne Decroux, considered “the father of modern mime” and teacher of world-famous mime Marcel Marceau.

Another student of Decroux, Sophie Wibaux, a French woman, moved to the United States to become Houle’s silent partner. For years, Houle and Wibaux performed together, touring the country and abroad. Many of their performances were sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts Touring program. Since 1982, when Wibaux joined the spiritual community of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in Antelope, Ore., Houle has performed solo.

The 46-year-old New Hampshire native divides his current stage act into two parts: mime and pantomime. To those who always thought mime and pantomime were one and the same, Houle explains that mime is “serious and dramatic.” It is “rhythmic, metaphorical.” Pantomime, on the other hand, he explains, is to be laughed at. It is lighthearted, illusory. Pantomime uses clown-type characters telling stories with conventional gestures. Houle calls mime “poetry,” and pantomime “prose.” It is the prose part that children love.

Some of Houle’s mime pieces are “Cain and Abel,” “The Muse,” and “Joan of Arc.” Pantomime includes, “The Circus,” “Laughter,” and “Noah’s Ark.”

Houle communicates with everything but his voice. Mimes, he says, are extremely disciplined performers because “they are forced to express themselves by all other means” outside spoken language. Although he doesn’t speak, Houle does use sound in his act. To accompany his movements, he employs music from Vivaldi and Rachmaninoff to ritualistic sounds of the Far East.

Houle remembers back 10 to 15 years ago when mime was seen as “a novelty” and “a fad.” At that time, he said, mime had a bad reputation, was hurt by all the self-proclaimed performers who donned their white makeup and climbed glass windows with their hands. He said the “unprofessionals” have since dropped out, and mime is back in the hands of dedicated artists.

When he isn’t touring, Houle is teaching his art to other would-be professionals, giving private and semiprivate classes in San Francisco. He has also taught stage movement and choreography at Stanford University, the New School for Social Research and the Peabody School of Music in Baltimore.

Houle appeared in two television films, “Faces of Mime” and “Out of Thin Air,” as well as “a couple of commercials.” But his heart is on stage where live audiences can see “the adorable clown” in his many moods.