Mime Teaches With Silence

Mariahelena Fuentes hardly thought her budding show business career as a mime would be enhanced by her fourth-grade class.

As it turns out, everyone benefits.

“I use mime in school to teach the children without using words,” said the Fullerton woman. “It’s one way to get their total attention.

“When you express yourself with legs, arms, face and body, you say something you can’t express in words,” said Fuentes, who usually wears a simple black outfit when performing. “It’s like having an inner voice and an inner dialogue.”

Performing in the classroom is also a way to keep sharp for weekend presentations when she takes her mime act on the road in Southern California to such regular stops as the Children’s Museum at La Habra and gigs in Palms Springs.

She usually performs with Ruben Girard, of Fullerton, a professional mime who calls Fuentes his protege. They met at a school assembly where he was performing.

They will be a highlight act March 16 at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton with “Statue Lights,” in which they portray statues that come to life.

“When I use mime in a storytelling scenario in the classroom, it’s like teaching them on a different wavelength,” said Fuentes, a San Diego State University graduate who studied psychology and Spanish. She is working on her master’s degree in linguistics.

“Kids have to use their imagination, and that’s important. It’s not like television where you just sit, listen and see,” said Fuentes, who also puts heavy emphasis on music and play-acting.

When she switches back to regular teaching, “the kids want to know what you are trying to teach them when you use words. I’m basically following standard teaching guidelines. I’m just being innovative,” she explained.

Born in Michigan as the youngest of nine children, Fuentes, 30, a single mother of two, said a show business career has been on her mind since she was a youth attending Catholic school and won a speech contest.

In high school she added singing and dancing to her repertoire.

“Although I wanted a show business career, I didn’t think acting was going to provide for the rent,” she said.

Her concern about supporting herself wasn’t the only reason to seek other means of making a living.

“My mom told me not to go into acting,” she remembers. “Mom was from the old school and thought it was not a proper thing for a lady to do.”

Show business, however, was not new to the family.

“My grandfather (Charles Taylor) was in vaudeville doing an act with a slingshot,” said Fuentes, who uses Mariah Taylor as her stage name. “They used to call him Sling Shot Charlie, and my mother worked in his act as a model.”

Before taking her current elementary school teaching job in Beaumont, Fuentes spent two years in Mexico City “to make a commitment to learn the language.” She later taught a bilingual first-grade class for two years in Paris.

While becoming adept as a mime, Fuentes would like to do more in acting. “I want to go as far as I can, but I know it will be difficult for me. I also love teaching.”