It felt like I had stepped back in time sitting in the green room watching Laurent Decol smear on his make up on for his mime act — like I watched my mum dress for a party as a little girl. Hunched up over his mirror at the Alliance Francaise, Decol talked about his passion for mime, which he learnt from the great Marcel Marceau. He spoke only in French while Anuradha Narayan of the Alliance did a live back and forth translation for both of us.
“It's a special white paste which does not need too many layers, see…,” said Decol as he smeared a bit on my wrist to show how it worked! “The white makeup on my face is used to distance myself from ordinary life and as the great Marceau said, the white visage is like a plain white paper on which you can write sentiments and expressions!” He also wore a beautiful pair of handcrafted white leather dancing shoes.
In a matter of seconds the hall at the Alliance was filled with children from schools across the city, who raced in for the best seats in front! They were not disappointed as Decol kept his young audience entranced through his 75-minute act. His flexible hands, facial expressions and pliable body told nine humourous stories without words, which had the audience in splits. It's an art and like a dancer, Decol has the gift of being able to use simple muscle contortions of his face to give different meanings to his movements. Moon-like dreamy characters or arrogant and bossy ones, Decol went through the range of emotions, the audience picked them up effortlessly.
The evening began around a sculptor where Decol was an artist working on a block of stone, chiselling and chopping so relentlessly that by the time he is done, it's been reduced to a small inconsequential piece of stone! His movements told the story perfectly and his facial expression at the end had one little girl say, “He acts just like my favourite — Mr. Bean!”
Characters one can meet in a public park or garden, which Decol had learnt from the great Marcel Marceau, was the next act, and my personal favourite.
The statue, the lovers, the priest, the ice-cream man, the balloon seller, the stroller and his dog — every single character was brought alive amazingly with both facial expressions together with body and hand movements. The balloon seller holding his gas balloons and the child losing them as fast as it got one, had all the little children in giggles, with Decol's mouth wide open staring at an imaginary balloon escaping high into the sky
His next act was about the circus where he showed off his prowess in enacting the weightlifter, the magician, the sword eater and the tight-rope walker. As a brilliant add on, Decol called up one of the children in the audience to come and lift the weights, which he was struggling to lift. The children rolled around with laughter watching Decol over act, when the little girl effortlessly lifted up the ‘weights' while he had keeled over with his efforts.
The rock musician act had loud background music while Decol mimicked a rock star's dramatic playing of the guitar or crashing of his drum set.
Mime is an art which requires skill and talent and Decol, for having had his audience riveted, was probably drained completely of energy and emotions by the end of the evening.
A director of a theatre company with more than 2,000 performances and workshops in 100 countries, Decol has worked as a professor at Marceau's International Mimodrama School.
