MEXICO MIME

The first time I went to Mexico was in 1973. I settled in the sleepy village of Patzcuaro, in Michoacan, to study mime with Sigfrido Aguilar.
Here's why.
Two years earlier I signed up with Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus as a first of May, a new clown. I found out much later that the only reason I was hired was because I was as skinny as a toothpick at the time, so could fit into any of the show costumes that Ringling had hanging up awaiting svelte bodies to fit 'em. Of humor, wit and skill I had none. This was made evident to me quickly as I sat at the feet of master jesters like Prince Paul, Mark Anthony, Swede Johnson, Dougie Ashton, and, most importantly, the fantastic Otto Greibling. Otto was the Picasso of pantaloons, the Byron of buffoons and the undisputed master of melancholy mirth. Like Chaplin, but without the treacle, he could make you laugh and cry at the same time. His sad tramp wandered the circus arena, hoping against hope for a crumb of affection and understanding from the audience. He spun wonderful sagas charged with emotion using nothing but a dirty rag or a tin pie plate. And he did it all in complete and dignified silence. Otto had lost his voice to throat cancer years before. He would lose his life to the very same thing the same year I got to fleetingly know him.
I tried to emulate these great clowns, my head fizzing with comic ideas that I was certain would lay 'em in the aisles. But when I would put one of my risible conceptions into practice the silence was so profound you could hear a pin drop, as well as my self-esteem. I was unable to translate my comic dreams into slapstick reality. Very frustrating.
I thought about quitting. Thought about the peace and intellectual nirvana of a job flipping burgers somewhere. No more great, welling thunder clouds of so-called inspiration rattling around my head wanting to burst out as new gags. I had nearly laid my ambitions to rest when I heard from Sigfrido Aguilar. Sigfrido had taught mime at the Ringling Clown College when I studied there for a month. His pantomime of a hapless taco vendor who unwisely eats all his own wares and then is afflicted with uncontrolable fits of gas was, and is, a great favorite of mine. He used no props, just his body. Sigfrido was starting a mime school in Mexico; did I want to go study with him? Did I?! Wild pachyderms couldn't have kept me from cashing in my meager savings for a ticket to Mexico. Here was a chance to learn how to communicate with a large audience using just my body. It was a new language I was determined to learn.
And I did. Sigfrido was a masterful teacher. There were four of us in the group. We spent mornings doing yoga and classical mime exercises from the French masters Etienne Decroux and Marcel Marceau. Boring stuff. Like finger exercises for the beginning piano player. Then came a long afternoon siesta. I and my compatriots, yankee gad-abouts who were not going to waste any time snoozing in the hot sun, would wander through the town square of Patzcuaro or attend a bull fight or try to haggle with vendors at the outdoor market over the price of an over-ripe mango. We came back to the mime studio in the cool of the evening, and that's when the fun began. Sigfrido gave us little stories, brief situations, to try to mime. Roller skating. Washing a pet dog. Eating an ice cream cone. Swinging on a swing. Simple and basic. But you try to do them as pure mime. Whew! Initially awkward and incoherent, Sigfrido patiently coached us how to give the appearance of fighting gravity and pushing against the nonexistent. Months went by. Two of the students quit. There was just me and a fellow funnyman from Ringling, Steve Smith. One evening as we rested from our ethereal labors Sigfrido gave us a significant nod. We were ready, he said, to put together our own stories in mime. We would henceforth dispense with the evening exercises. That time was ours to cook up some narrative pantomimes for his inspection and approval. Should we prove minimally competent he was ready to form us into a group, to be called Los Payasos Educados, and start touring Mexico as a mime troupe under the aegis of the Mexican government -- we would be paid in cold hard pesos for our work! Hot diggity dog!
I worked like a navvy, putting my old comic filibusters into mime form. Smith and I collaborated on a few of his comic dreams, too. After a fortnight Sigfrido looked upon our work and pronounced it good, so we hit the road.
We toured public schools, mostly. Our stage would be the flag-stoned patio with no backdrop save the adobe walls. And we were a hit. At long last I could translate my funny thoughts into funny actions and be understood. A very fine feeling, let me tell you. I still recall at one school the English language teacher, an ancient gringo, came up to me after the show to shake my hand. "You" he prnounced, "are a combination of Stan Laurel and Harpo Marx". To this day I have never received a more heartening plaudit.
Who said all good things must come to an end? Whoever the original wet blanket is I hope they trip and fall into a pit of telemarketers. The last performance of Los Payasos Educados was in Guadalajara, at the Teatro Degollado. The grand opera house. High society. Huge stage. Over a thousand in the audience that night. We opened with one of my original pieces. Doctor & Patient. I'm the doctor. Sigfrido and Smith are the patients. One by one they come in with whimsical diseases and I cure them. The last patient of the day is Smith. He is depressed. Suicidal. He is going to kill himself. In artful silence I convince him that life is a beautiful poem that has just begun and he is cured. He shakes my hand in great joy. I modestly demand my fee. Pulling his pockets out into the thin air he indicates he hasn't a centavo to his name. Nettled, I make a hangman's noose and slowly dangle it in front of him. With a maniacal gleam in his eye he grabs the rope and hurries offstage.
We were a great success that night. Sigfrido talks of a tour of South America, paid for by the Mexican government. But subterranean noises and movements in my gut cut my brilliant career short. I come down with amoebic dysentary. Bedrest for several weeks, if not months.
I bow to the inevitable. Move back to the States to recuperate. Smith takes a job with Ringling again and when I am better he calls me to say old man Feld, the owner of Ringling Brothers, wants the two of us to work together as an advance team of clowns to publicize the circus. We work well as a team. And like all teams we are basically just riffing on all the themes that Laurel and Hardy originally invented and displayed so well. Sometimes I'm Laurel, sometimes I'm Hardy. It's all good.
I don't know where we could have gone together as a team. Maybe nowhere. The heady days of slapstick comedy were already on the wane then. Clowns were becoming passe and, with the advent of the cursed Stephen King, would soon become monsters, something to scare little children with -- not entertain them.
My church called me to labor in Thailand for two years as a missionary, so I broke up the team, sidetracked the karma, to go knock on bamboo doors. I don't regret it for a moment. But Smith took it hard. We never worked together again.
And now, thirty years later, I've stopped doing mime and physical comedy. I'm fat and I move slow and don't care for the smell of stale greasepaint backstage. Unlike Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in the movie Limelight there will be no poignant and splendid comedy coda -- with an audience laughing helplessly at inspired and antiquated shennanigans.
No. I've found a new partner I'm dazzled with. A new way, for me, to search out funnybones -- but it's an old and honorable way for many. I'm talking about me and the English language. There is still much to be written and rhymed in this crazy old world. And I'm just the boyo to do it. Perhaps it'll happen while I'm an English teacher in Mexico. Perhaps not. But come along for the ride, won't you? It promises to be interesting . . .