BWW Blog: Amanda Grillo - Our School, Our Show, OUR TOWN: The Art of Pantomime

Welcome back! This week's article features an art form that a production of Our Town would not be complete without: PANTOMIME! For those who don't know what pantomime is, I decided to give you the gift of the Oxford Dictionary definition:

"[to] express or represent (something) by extravagant and exaggerated mime"

In Our Town, pantomime is used to express objects that aren't physically there. Examples of this are, Bessie the Horse, Howie Newsome's milk jugs, Mrs. Webb's peas, and many others throughout the play. My roles in the production don't heavily involve pantomime, so I decided to find out from some of the cast what they think of this style.

Timothy M. Gadomski discusses the experience of playing Howie Newsome, who actively pantomimes an entire horse!

"Pantomime is something most people don't work with everyday. Our Town is my first time doing it on stage and I have to mime Bessie, my horse, and the delivery of milk. It has really been a struggle to get but it quickly got easier after working with [our assistant director] Diana Harris. Pantomime is much easier to do when you know exactly what you have in mind. After I was able to visualize the real-world objects and animals I was working with, my job became much easier."

Francesca Fontanez also shares her struggles of Pantomime when she first began:

"The aspect of Pantomime that is most difficult for me is that what makes perfect sense in my individual perspective might not translate well to an audience."

Erica Quaedvlieg, who plays Emily Webb, shares her thoughts on the technique:

"It's always a work in process, for each motion, there needs to be a before and after movement. You don't just swiftly open a cabinet and then its done, a continuous movement is required to make it seem as if a real cabinet was actually there."

Michael Kennedy, who plays George Gibbs, explained how sipping coffee...doesn't always look like sipping coffee:

"Pantomime is surprisingly difficult. You'd think that sipping a cup of coffee is easy, but when there is no cup of coffee, you suddenly look like a fool trying to smack yourself in the mouth."

With similar sentiments, Dalimar Irizarry, who plays Louella Soames, shares what her journey with pantomime has been like:

"For some reason, everything is heavier when there is nothing there. There is also the idea of 'completely beginning and ending a scene' that translates into pantomime, you need to show the journey of the movement throughout it or else you completely lose the audience in what you're doing (something like writing in a journal becomes what looks like a muscle spasm)."

Pantomime is never easy. The cast took part in a movement and miming rehearsal lead by Assistant Director, Diana Harris and the technique then came into perspective for many. It is more than just moving through gestures at any old speed. One must know the weight of the object, correct size, material, everything. The goal of pantomime is that when the actor truly sees the objects or actions they are miming, the audience will too.

Come check out all of the hard work we've put in, just a month away!

Our Town by Thornton Wilder

November 16th thru 19th at the Bucknall Theater

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