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Mime or '''pantomime''' is a theatrical medium or Performance Art , involving the acting out of a story by a Mime Artist through body motions, without use of Speech . HISTORY OF MIME The performance of pantomime originates at its earliest in Ancient Greece ; the name is taken from a single masked dancer called ''Pantomimus''. Early usage did not necessarily denote a silent performance. In Europe in the middle ages, early forms of mime such as Mummer Play s and later Dumbshow s evolved. MIME IN FILM Prior to the work of . The restrictions of early motion picture technology meant that stories had to be told with minimal dialogue which was largely restricted to Intertitles . This often demanded a highly stylized form of physical acting largely derived from the stage. Thus, mime plays an important role in films prior to the Talkies . The mimetic style of film acting was used to great effect in German Expressionism film. Silent Film comedians like Charles Chaplin , Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton learned the craft of mime in the Theatre but through film had a profound influence on mimes who work in live theatre even decades after their death. Indeed, Chaplin may be the best documented mime in history. The famous French comedian, writer and director Jacques Tati achieved his initial popularity working as a mime, and indeed his later films had only minimal dialogue, relying instead on many subtle expertly choreographed visual gags. Tati, like Chaplin before him, would mime out the movements of every single character in his films and ask his actors to repeat them. Mime is silent acting! MIME IN NON-WESTERN THEATRE TRADITIONS While most of this article has treated mime as a constellation of related and historically linked Western theatre genres and performance techniques, analogous performances are evident in the theatrical traditions of other civilizations. Classical Indian Musical Theatre , is often erroneously labeled as "dance" perhaps due to sympathetic British colonial audiences not recognizing the theatrical context, is a grouping of theatrical forms in which the performer presents a narrative using stylized gesture, a complex vocabulary of hand positions, and mime illusions to play different characters and represent animals, actions, and landscapes, often, though not always accompanied by recitation, music, and the performer's own percussive footwork. The Natya Shastra , an ancient treatise on theatre by Bharata Muni from which these Indian "dance" forms trace their lineage, makes mention of silent performance, or ''mukhabinaya''. SEE ALSO
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