Mime Breaks Age, Cultural Barriers Without Breaking the Sound Barrier

Janet L. Schwartz remembers sitting on the floor with a bunch of classmates at Cal State Fullerton, all the time thinking, “At my age it’s crazy to be doing this.”

They were celebrating her 60th birthday.

But “doing this” was learning the fine art of a mime, and now “The Mime of Hearts,” as she calls herself, still feels like a college student. “In my heart, I’m just 18,” Schwartz said.

Her role as a mime “is the greatest joy in my life other than my family,” said the Santa Ana mother of five and grandmother of five.

“But you want to hear my newest project?” she asked. “I’m putting together a mime class with children.

“Can you imagine how those kids will feel when they hear the applause. Their self esteem will skyrocket.”

She sometimes takes her mime act to church to interpet Bible stories and once found her mime ability helpful during a trip to China when she and husband Martin D. Schwartz, 64, tried to communicate without speaking Chinese.

“I used mime to speak their language,” she said. “It was wonderful.”

Loaded with a self-proclaimed “abundance of energy,” Schwartz paints her face white with a red heart on her cheek and wears a shirt emblazoned with hearts when she performs at schools and before senior citizens.

“Besides entertaining them, the one point I try to get across to seniors is to keep busy,” she said.

During her early days as a mime “I started doing a lot of birthday parties, but I didn’t find them satisfying,” she said. “So I started to entertain senior citizens and other groups that needed some happiness.”

Besides performing at various community events and functions, Schwartz also holds mime classes at the Tustin Community Services Department for all ages.

Long active in little theater--”I’ve always wanted to perform”--Schwartz said she always seemed to have “a knot in my stomach because all my life I was supposed to be doing something like this.”

Although it took her 60 years, “being a mime was it,” she said. “It gives me the most wonderful feeling in the world--because I can really make people happy.”

No doubt the first laugh you get from humorist Phil M. Miller, 55, of Fullerton comes when he talks about his early life as a U.S. Marine drill instructor. But as a professional speaker, he lets you choose your topic.

Among many, he speaks on body language, restaurant intimidation and singles, the current favorite, and all come with a humorous approach, even for management conferences.

“I’m really teaching skills to singles, not counseling,” said Miller, himself a single, “But if there’s one thing singles like about the other sex is a good sense of humor.” He also tells them the best places to meet singles are laundry complexes, supermarkets and “any line. Stand in it.”

For management groups, “A humorous talk is a change of pace,” said Miller. “It gets them away from cold, hard facts.”

For instance, when Miller talks about body language to management groups, he points out that “everything you do, how you stand, walk and look at people, says something about you. If you fall asleep at work, you’re bored.”

Why Not Category: Saddleback High School junior Janet Mills, 17, of Santa Ana was named Best Witness in a recent Orange County Mock Trial competition.

Javier Galvan of Anaheim, a recent naturalized citizen, was having a tough time learning English in an English as a Second Language class.

He said they were going too fast for him so he went to another teacher--his 8-year-old daughter, Susy Galvan, a straigt A second grader at Paul Revere Junior High School, who gives her truck driver father daily instruction. She helps him read her school books and writes words on her chalk board to help him, just like a teacher.

He also listens to English-language tapes while driving his truck.

After meeting the father in a parent conference, Susy’s veteran teacher Charlene Ruble, said, “He asked me to make sure Susy brought her homework home so he could do it too. It used to be that parents helped their children and now in this changing society, the reverse is happening.”

And Susy’s future? “I want to be a teacher,” she said.