Mime has a special fascination - neither young nor old can escape it. Babies are basically born as little pantomime artists. As long as they cannot speak, parents often have to rely on their little ones' facial expressions to interpret their well-being. In its artistic form, pantomime is a universal art: Mr. Bean's wordless sketches are understood worldwide.
Pantomime should not be a guessing game
"Pantomime is not a charade. If the audience doesn't understand it, the fault lies not with the audience, but with the mime. The audience should not understand afterwards, but at the same time, I would almost say beforehand," the French actor Jean Soubeyran (1921-2000) once said. The mime fulfills the expectations of the audience.
The Dresden International Pantomime Theater Festival has also been experiencing this for decades. It was founded in 1982 - still under a different name - by Ralf Herzog and Rainer Petrovski. The aim was to showcase the diversity of the art form and to network artists from Germany and abroad. Ralf Herzog is something like the supreme pantomime of Dresden.
