The Magic of Theatre

Lighting expert, musician, actor, chair. On a stark stage Theatre Re (https://theatrere.co.uk) magic out of little a great whirl of emotions around moment and loss. When is the last time we will do something? And how do some signs, symbols and movements come to be treasured in each of our memories? Lighting creates mood, music tension, mime transforms a chair into a person, a feeling, a state of mind. After the recent performance of Moments at the Tobacco Factory Theatre in Bristol (https://tobaccofactorytheatres.com), I thought about what the actor, Guillaume Pigé, said about mime: that if it had no effect, it would not have survived as an art form for over two thousand years.

At a theatre during the reign of the Emperor Augustus, so Macrobius (Saturnalia 2.7.13-14) records, Hylas was miming King Agamemnon as a great physical presence. non tulit Pylades et exclamauit e cauea: σ? μακρ?ν ο? μ?γαν ποιε??. tunc eum populus coegit idem saltare canticum, cumque ad locum uenisset quem reprehenderat, expressit cogitantem, nihil magis ratus magno duci conuenire quam pro omnibus cogitare. Pylades couldn’t bear it and heckled from the stalls: “Sie machen ihn gro?, nicht gro?artig.” Then the audience persuaded Pylades to mime to the same music, and when he came to the passage that he’d criticised, he represented someone deep in thought, interpreting the role of a great leader as thinking on behalf of everyone else.