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Rainy Day Medicine:

Phillip Maxwell climbs out of a Speed Queen Dryer after taking the dryer for a spin!

All of this end of summer rain in Vancouver has caused artists to think of exciting, creative ways to dry off. Phillip has been a Corporeal Mime artist for the past 30 years.

"The Corporeal Mime Society was formed in Vancouver in 1986 by Mimes Dean Fogal and Phillip Maxwell to create a structure that would cultivate a community awareness of the many health and artistic attributes of corporeal Mime; a facility that would house ongoing training in Corporeal Mime; and a community of Corporeal Mime Artists in British Columbia." . The Corporeal Mime society is directly affiliated with TOOBA a school for physical actors, performers, and teachers (in Vancouver).

One subgroup of physical theater is corporeal mime. Its objective is to place drama inside the moving human body, rather than to substitute gesture for speech as in pantomime. In this medium, the mime must apply to physical movement those principles that are at the heart of drama: pause, hesitation, weight, resistance and surprise. Corporeal mime accentuates the vital importance of the body and physical action on stage.

It was developed primarily by Étienne Decroux, who was heavily influenced by his training with Jacques Copeau at the Ecole du Vieux-Colombier. He created this method and technique for creative performers wishing to transform their ideas into a physical reality, in order to devise a new style of theater "making visible the invisible," as Decroux put it.

The objectives of corporeal mime are to enable the actor to become more autonomous in creating metaphor-based physical theater pieces, which may include text, but are not based on text, i.e., to give the actor greater access to physical metaphors in work in traditional plays, and to increase the actor's strength, agility, flexibility and imaginative powers.

While Decroux’s movement style was quite different from the commedia dell'arte from which 19th century pantomime took as its model, Decroux was influenced by this classical art form. Decroux worked extensively with Teatro Piccolo in Milan, training actors and choreographing Arlecchino an adaptation of Galdoni's Servant of Two Masters directed by Giorgio Strehler. Coincidentally, Jaques Lecoq, another famous mime teacher worked as a movement teacher at Piccolo Teatro until he was succeeded by Decroux.

Unlike classical pantomime, corporeal mime was also no longer an anecdotal art that used conventional gestures to create illusions of objects or persons.

Corporeal mimes seek to express abstract and universal ideas and emotions through codified movements of the entire body (but most especially the trunk--the face and hands are confined to a secondary role in this movement form) Some corporeal mimes write their own texts, as did the Greek mime-authors, integrating the mime-actor's art with the author's. They also include props, costumes, masks, lighting effects and music. Because it contains movement expression along with other elements, it is often loosely alluded to as physical or movement theater.

Located on the spectacular West Coast of Canada, in Vancouver, British Columbia, TOOBA is a school for physical actors, performers, and teachers who are looking for integrated total theater training. The school was founded in 1995 by Corporeal Mime Master Teacher Dean Fogal, and Theater Director Kate Weiss. Their vision of offering comprehensive training in both text-based acting training and physical theater skills is unique to TOOBA.

TOOBA facilitates the development of the "whole performer," building confidence and the professional tool-kit while retaining each student's unique sense of self. All study at TOOBA begins with the body, the actor's primary tool of expression. The focus is on integrated expression of body, intellect and spirit. The school offers intensive training in physical theater, voice training, singing, text-based theater and ensemble training, and encourages personal creative work. TOOBA graduates are composite actors that have the professional training and life-skills to succeed.

Photographed at 1715 West 11th avenue apartments laundry room in Vancouver, BC - March 7, 1981.