MIME FEST 2013: International Pantomime Festival Drawing Top Artists to the Czech RepublicPUBLIC

Czech pantomime is experiencing a dynamic renaissance and is again among the best in the world, as will be seen at the second year of the Mime Fest International Pantomime Festival. In additional to Czech artists, internationally acclaimed mimes from several European countries as well as the US will be performing at Mime Fest 2013. The festival will also include mime street performances, performances for schools, and various workshops. The second annual Mime Fest International Pantomime Festival will again take place this year in the town of Polička in East Bohemia from September 16th-22nd, 2013. The festival will feature internationally renowned professional mimes from the Czech Republic, USA, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Germany. A key element of the project is also to bring together the various pantomime schools of the Visegrad countries and Germany, and to provide a venue for their students, the mimes of the future, to perform. Aside from public performances in theaters, festival goers will also see mimes on Polička square. “The goal of the festival is to renew the forgotten gilded age of Czech pantomime, to continue in this tradition, and to create a platform for pantomime. We are attempting to revive a nearly forgotten art which today is able to be quite surprising in its modern form. We must also introduce viewers to the contemporary art of pantomime, at an international level,” says one of the founders of the festival, Radim Vizváry, who is a Polička native and presently one of the most expressive mimes in the world. For the entire week of MIME FEST, each evening there will be public performances. Czech artists scheduled to perform include Boris Hybner, Anna Polívková, Vojta Švejda and Radim Vizváry, from Slovakia Miro Kasprzyk and Adrian Ohrádka, from Poland Bartolomiej Ostapczuk, and from Germany Anke Gerber. New pantomime companies will also perform, such as the all-girls group Mime Fatal, Mime Marmelade from Slovakia, Polish group Teatr Sztuka Ciala, Berlin mimes Elastisch, or the Czech group Divadlo pantomimy, which will be presenting a tragicomic story entitled Kluci z Pixly (Boys from the Box) about five boys who leave an orphanage. Also not to be missed are the student performances of the HAMU Department of Pantomime, including their very successful show Pirates. Pantomime workshops led by professional mimes are also an integral part of the festival. These workshops are open to both art school students and the general public. In one workshop, American Francesca Jandasek will for the first time in Europe being introducing the latest movement methods employed by the dancers and mimes of Gyrotonic. Another workshop will be led by Oliver Pollak, a student of world-renowned mime Marcel Marceau, who will be coming from Berlin to teach the Mime Corporeal technique. This technique was invented in France in the 1950s by E. Decroux, whose work gave rise to modern pantomime. Other workshops will be led by the founder of Hungarian pantomime Zoltan Kárpáthy, or leading Polish mime Jerzy Winnicki, who is carrying on the pantomime tradition of H. Tomaszewski. Each day there will also be special performances for elementary and high school students, as well as family performances. “The first Mime Fest last year was a phenomenal success. People especially enjoyed An Evening of Pantomime, where in a single evening, several mimes present the best of their repertoire in short scenes. We’ll be using this performance format again this year, and I’m sure the audience will be thrilled to see so many of the world’s best mimes performing in succession,” says Petra Jílková, Mime Fest organizer. Mime Fest is supported by the Visegrad Fund, the Czech-German Fund for the Future, the City of Polička and the Pardubice Region. More at: www.mimefest.cz