Putting on a Happy Face Is Her Job

The name of her Anaheim business gives you a clear idea of what Miriam Tait is all about.

It is called “Absolute Merriment.”

“I’m just a big kid,” said Tait, 47, “and when I become a mime, I give myself total permission to be playful, although some of what I do is very serious and thought-provoking. And poetic.”

Tait, who taught mime and dance at Cal State Fullerton from 1971 to ‘85, now performs as Muffi the mime in whiteface and costumes at school assemblies, company gatherings, concerts and birthday parties.

“I wanted to perform more, so I opened my own business,” she said. “I felt I needed to go out in the streets and do more of what I was teaching.”

When she isn’t performing in Orange County, she may be “hither and thither” teaching band leaders at major colleges across the country how to use facial expressions to motivate their musicians.

And when she is performing, “I try to send out waves of joy because it’s contagious,” she says. “I get bushels of joy back, so I continue to spread it to others.”

Not that she does not have bouts of anger or worry. “I’m not happy all the time, but when I put on my mime mask, those feelings go on the back burner.”

Tait, who has a bachelor’s degree in art and theater, still teaches mime and dance, at the Anaheim Cultural Arts Center.

In her classes, she said, she wants to make students aware of how to use their bodies to communicate. In one exercise, she puts a pillowcase over a student’s head. “It helps students focus in on how important gestures are, and it helps them realize they have a chest, hands, legs and shoulders to use in pantomime,” Tait says.

Tait began teaching the college mime class as a way to help her as a dancer, but mime eventually became her top priority. She went to Germany to learn more under the tutelage of the internationally known mime teacher Masami Kuni.

Tait also is a storyteller, and she sometimes works as a sketch artist.

“I’m what you would call an all-around performer,” said Tait, who either sews her own costumes or makes colorful get-ups from things she finds in thrift shops.

At Christmastime, she and her husband, Roger Tait, a contractor, work as Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus. For private parties for children she becomes a clown or a pirate.

“This is not just a way to make money,” Tait said; “it’s my life. Once you get into the creative processes in entertainment, there’s nothing to equal it, and there’s no turning back.”

And, she adds: “It’s a real privilege to be a mime. It’s a gift and that’s why it’s not a job.”

If anyone visiting the Orange County Fair in July should come in grumpy, the amateur comedy contest might just change the mood.

But it will be a serious event for the 20 contestants selected, says fair spokeswoman Jill Lloyd.

The winner will get a chance to aperform at the Improvisation comedy club in Irvine.

What’s more, the winner gets a T-shirt.

In her earlier days, Ann M. Dunbar entertained and met such international figures and stars as Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Irving Berlin, Howard Hughes, Winston Churchill, Ginger Rogers and Joan Crawford.

Dunbar, a 23-year Costa Mesa resident and a one-time performer herself, will mark her 100th birthday March 25 with family and friends. She no doubt will celebrate the occasion with a martini, one of her nightly pleasures.

Her first husband, Harold B. Franklin, managed movie theaters and created stage presentations in which she performed, according to her son Al Franklin of Costa Mesa.