1. The Origins of Mime 15:43
Mime in Greece and Rome • Italy: Commedia dell'arte • France: Molière •
England: Grimaldi the clown • Silent films of Chaplin and Mack Sennett •
Deburau's refinement of the character of Pierrot2. Making the Invisible Visible 4:50
Marceau's early years • Wartime in the French Resistance • Studies with Etienne
Decroux and Charles Dullin • Jean-Louis Barrault's Les Enfants du Paradis
• Performing Harlequin in Barrault's theater company • Decroux's "art of
counterpoint" • Formation of own company • The birth of Bip
3. The Eternal Law of the Underdog 8:02
Mime has to tell the story of man—tragedy, comedy • Chaplin's Little Tramp
• The eternal story of the man who slides on the banana peel • Bip as a
continuation of Chaplin and Pierrot
4. Style and Character through Gesture 12:06
The artist's mission as defined by Racine: "To touch and to please" • The
role of style in compressing aspects of reality to create illusion through symbols and
images • Pantomime de style: Man's struggle with the elements • Pantomime
de Bip: Emphasis on portrayal of character
5. The Mime Must Sing within Himself 10:21
Showing how life is • Comparisons with Picasso and Cocteau • A sense of song in
the mime's gestures • Marceau on his paintings, their similarity in spirit to
Chagall's • The universality of man
6. Life Copies the Theater 7:42
The theater's tradition of imitating life on the stage now reversed • Why young
people dress to attract attention • The terror of anonymity
Total playing time: 59:50
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"Marcel Marceau
Speaks" started out as a tape recording made by William Fifield with Marcel Marceau.
From this informal beginning, their conversation on mime went on to have its first release
in 1971 as an LP. Caedmon Records later also issued it as a cassette.
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