By Nancy T. Lu
Of the many great performing artists who
made an impact on their audience, the late Marcel Marceau (1923-2007) was a virtual
giant. To watch him on the stage – with face painted white, lips colored red
and eyes emphasized with black lines – was to love every moment of his
performance.
No spectator could sit unmoved by the
showmanship of this compleat artist. He harnessed his face, arms, legs and entire
body to articulate a poetic idea or gem of thought. The depth of his perception
of humanity was remarkable.
Laughter filled the hall wherever the great
French mime performed. He made an adorable Bip clumsily trying to keep his
balance on ice during a first attempt to skate. Or he affected the hilarious
mannerisms of a train passenger struggling to keep his bearing and his suitcase
on an overhead rack in a swaying train.
As a man on the verge of suicide, he
considered taking poison but ended up relishing the drink. He eyed the rope as
another possibility but ended up swinging his cord like a baton. As a samurai,
he thought he could handle a sword but found himself having a hard time keeping
the weapon from rising strangely by itself out of his scabbard.
Marcel Marceau sought not only to amuse his
audience but also to give them some food for thought. Behind the veneer of
foolishness and ludicrousness was always a suggestion of wisdom. He tended to
philosophize a bit in his eloquent acts.
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| Writer Nancy T. Lu meets Marcel Marceau in Taipei. |
Every time Marcel Marceau came to Taipei years ago, he was
prepared to bare his heart and soul. He readily warmed the hearts of his
countless fans. Every pantomime in his program gave away his deep understanding
of life and living.
The unforgettable storyteller turned heart eater in “Le mangeur de coeur” to reveal his insight of humanity. The mime with a title literally translated as “Heart Eater” told the story of a man who was searching for love. He decided to kill and eat hearts to find what he was looking for.
The character picked for his first victim
was an evil man. The taste of the man’s heart did not appeal to him. For his
second victim, he chose to devour the heart of a woman who had jilted him. The
taste was much better but not quite what he was after. For his third try, he
selected the heart of a child. The man found himself transformed into a child.
He gave his own heart to the child so that the victim would live. As a result,
life was snuffed out of the heart eater.
According to Marcel Marceau himself, the
mime called for a certain maturity in the performer. It required a lot of
thinking.
The mime artist needed a lot of experience
to enter into the realm of fantasy. Marcel played a great deal with symbols.
His acts were not always to be taken at face value. For this reason, he was
fond of stories involving metamorphosis. His themes were often derived from literature.
He incorporated ideas drawn from his readings into his works.
In “The Saber of the Samurai,” which was
staged in Taipei,
Marceau worked on the theme that the saber did not always mean the wielder was
on the winning side.
Marceau revealed that he was fond of
playing with mask changes. The transformation kept the audience wondering which
was the real face. He frequently threw ideas to his spectators for them to
reflect on. The scenarios raised unanswered questions. The conclusions were
left to his mime fans.
Marceau confessed he turned to Chinese
inspiration occasionally. In fact, he did not have a shortage of Chinese
stories to tell. Marceau, for example, narrated a Taoist tale about a
potbellied merchant who hired a coolie to take him and his heavy purchase to
his destination. In return, he promised to give the coolie a big tip and three
gems of wisdom.
Along the way, the poor coolie paused to
catch his breath. The man finally gave his first advice: “It is more difficult
to tell the truth than to lie.”
The trip continued. After a while, the
coolie stopped again and asked for the second advice. The maxim he got went
like this: “A man who is warned is worth two.”
Shortly the rickshaw driver asked about the
contents of the package. He was told it contained “fine and precious things.”
After bringing the man to his destination
and lugging the load with great difficulty up to the top floor of a building,
the fellow was told the third and final advice: “If somebody tells you to carry
a heavy load and promises to pay you a fat fee, do not believe him.”
Of the wisdom of age, Marceau remarked: “The
older one grows, the better one becomes.”
Mime has a special affinity to Asian
theater whether Chinese or Japanese, according to the legendary French mime.
The masks and the movements in Japanese theater fascinated him. So did the
movements in the Chinese opera. Even the “tai chi” motions are comparable to
mime, he observed. Of special interest to him were the hand movements in the
air.
Marceau’s program usually required the
support of two assistants, often graduates of the three-year course at l’Ecole
de Mimedrame Marcel Marceau in Paris.
They helped create illusions with their hands. During his time, some 80
students from 20 different countries went for training at his school. Classical
and modern dance, fencing, wielding a dagger as well as a baton were all part
of the training. The mime students also mastered acrobatic skills. The main
lessons though were naturally in the mime discipline taught by Marcel Marceau
himself.
Every protégé of Marceau studied how to
articulate his feelings, how to gracefully maintain balance, how to translate
opposing forces like the Chinese yin
and yang, how to dramatize contrasts,
reminiscences as well as internal echoes of his life, how to let the virtuosity
of his body and the sensitivity of his soul burst forth.
Marcel Marceau showed the art of a great
mime through his portrayal of facets of humanity. Bip, a clown first presented
by him in the Theatre de Poche in Paris
in 1947, came to life on the international stage. “Bip Plays David and Goliath”
and “Bip Commits Suicide” were numbers in his well-loved repertoire.
Marceau proved at his best when
metamorphosing from one character to another. In “David and Goliath,” Bip
emerged from one side of a screen as a puny David with his slingshot. He
disappeared behind the screen only to make his reentry from the other side of
the screen as a rough and brawny Goliath. His body language spoke out loud and
clear in a world of silence. The shifts sometimes happened so fast. As a
result, spectators began to believe that there were indeed two characters.
A 12-year-old fan once wrote Marcel Marceau
in Paris after
he fell ill and was operated on. The girl’s letter stood out in a pile of 500 mails
from fans, all wishing him speedy recovery. She wrote: “I want Bip to live.” In
the letter, she inserted a US$20 bill. Marceau, renowned for his
emotion-filled acts, was greatly touched by the gesture.
The aging Marceau once confessed his fear
of flying. But his unforgettable visits to Taipei did not stop due to the overwhelming public
clamor for his mime. Memories of Bip the Clown, wearing a hat with a quivering
rose and standing like a ballet dancer before his adoring public, linger. He
shone there on the stage with head held high. His arms moved with studied
grace. Each time he made those graceful steps forward like a trained dancer, he
was just beginning to sweep his admiring audience into the emotion-packed world
of mime.
