One story ... no words
There are lots of ways of telling a story. We can use the spoken, written or printed word. We can also use still or moving pictures or music. Mime is a way of acting out a story through body movement, without the use of speech. A mime artist is someone who tells a story through gestures and facial expressions.
The art of mime goes back to the ancient Greeks, and the word 'mime' comes from a character in Greek drama called 'Pantomimus' who used silent gestures to support the main story the spoken chorus and actors were telling the audience.
Mime is a universal theatrical language that can be understood by everybody. We all make gestures to express ourselves. A mime artist organises these gestures, expressions and movements into a story that can be anything he wants it to be.
Lights! Camera! Action!
Mime artists have told stories in theatres, village squares and on street corners for hundreds of years. But at the beginning of the 20th century mime moved into top-line story-telling for the masses with the invention of the cinema.