London Event Shows All in Good Mime

Toby Sedgwick has been lying on a London stage pretending to be a slice of bacon, sizzling in a pan.

As he twists and turns, the room is filled with the smell of frying bacon--at least to the noses of many of those watching.

Sedgwick is a mime artist, and some of the world’s best are performing in the 12th London Mime Festival, the oldest event of its kind.

During the two-week festival, the mimes are performing in theaters, concert halls, local community arts centers, universities, even a library, in London and in towns across England.

“We have probably presented every major mime in the world,” festival director Joseph Seelig claimed in an interview.

Mime is entertainment without words, a form of theater practiced by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Seelig called it “the art of creating illusion in silence, without props or music, just the body.”

The world’s best-known mime is probably Frenchman Marcel Marceau, who wears white makeup, a striped jersey and a tall hat, and makes you believe he is climbing stairs when there are none.

“Marceau has one style, but he is so famous he has eclipsed the others,” Seelig said. “Charlie Chaplin was a mime, but nobody thinks of that.”

“Because of Marceau, people think mime in France is bound to be the best and popular, but it isn’t so. Mime is wonderful in Eastern Europe, and there are splendid American mimes.”

Dan Kamin, a busy American performer, has his own show at the festival called “Confessions of an Illusionist.” His book, “Charlie Chaplin’s One-Man Show,” is regarded in the profession as the definitive study of Chaplin’s art.

Mime blossomed in Czechoslovakia because under the old Hapsburg Empire, the Austrian rulers made German the official language. Actors circumvented the prohibition on their own languages in theaters with mime theater, which didn’t need a license.

Seelig called the Czech mime Bolek Polivka, who is taking part in the festival, “the greatest clown of our time.”

Polivka and his partner, Chantal Poulain, work with every theatrical trick in the book: costumes, masks, puppets and illusion.

Helen Lannaghan, the festival co-director, said the budget is small and dependent on box office receipts, with some help from the state-funded Arts Council. Income from all sources is $165,000.

This year’s festival opened Jan. 15 and runs through Sunday.