Improvisation And Mime

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31088, 17 June 1966, Page 14

Improvisation And Mime

Improvisation and mime were discussed at the monthly meeting of the Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Association of Teachers of Speech and Drama recently. Miss L. Arnold gave a talk on methods of teaching mime, and Mrs A. Marsh spoke on the value of prepared improvisation as a part of speech training. Mrs Marsh said that to prepared improvisation, group members were told to think out a character to be presented by each in a scene to be improvised at the next meeting. Interviews were particularly useful material for this type of improvisation, she said. Both speakers illustrated the techniques they had discussed with work done by some of their own pupils. A scene from “The Miracle Worker” by William Gibson was presented by Mrs P. Merwood and Miss K. Chalmers. The scene of conflict between the blind, deaf and dumb child, Helen Keller, and her tutor, Annie Sullivan, had a minimum of spoken words, and showed how effective mime could be in the expression of strong emotion.