Famous mime to perform

April 16, the Department of Theater and Drama will welcome a person to the stage who has absolutely nothing to say.\nThe silence on stage results from the performer -- Marcel Marceau, a world-famous mime, whose stage shows incorporate only motion.\nTheater and drama assistant professor Murray McGibbon saw Marceau perform in London in 1979. He said the performance was so extraordinary he still remembers it vividly.\n"His genius is that he is able to fill space with perhaps more eloquence of language without speaking," McGibbon said. "It's elevated poetry and motion. If Marcel is 'walking' along a glass window, you can see it because he creates it. To be able to create that sense of illusion is an extraordinary gift and ability."\nMarceau, born in France in 1923, was inspired at a young age by silent film artists such as Charlie Chaplin and Laurel & Hardy. He toured the United States for the first time in 1955 after years of study, which was followed years later by television appearances with Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin, according to the Marcel Marceau Foundation Web site. Marceau also had his own one-man show, "Meet Marcel Marceau."\nMcGibbon said seeing Marceau perform proved to him that Marceau was a true artist.\n"He has an absolute economy of movement," he said. "When you watch Marcel, you can absolutely visualize where he is. You can see a broadway musical -- a huge spectacle, whereas he can create a spectacle with nothing on the stage. It's a mark of genius."\nJunior Arian Moayed, a theater and drama major, said even people who are unfamiliar with Marceau's work will be entertained and intrigued by his performance.\n"He has a very imaginative mind, a virtuosity," Moayed said. "What he does better than anybody else, he demands everything of his body and controls it better than anybody else. He makes any object come to life out of nothing. He's brilliant in about 275 different ways."\nJesus Dapena, a kinesiology professor, said he is enthralled by how Marceau can fool the audience into thinking there is something there when there is actually nothing.\n"From a biomechanic specialist's perspective, the most interesting thing is how (mimes) can make it seem like they hit something when they really don't."\nSenior Tom Ridgely said he knows what it feels like to act and invent objects, as a member of Full Frontal Comedy.\n"Improv uses a lot of pantomime," Ridgely said. "It works in improv just like it works for Marceau. The audience is engaged when they are asked to fill in the blank and use their imagination."\nMcGibbon said he considers Marceau to be one of the major wonders of the stage.\n"To have such a world luminary here really brings home to you that Bloomington is a really extraordinary place to be," he said. "This all goes back to (the) brilliance of Herman B Wells, who said he wanted to bring the world to Indiana. To be able to expose students to the great stages of Paris and London is remarkable of any university."\nMarceau will perform at 4:30 p.m. April 16 and 17 in the University Theatre. The performance, part of the Ralph L. Collins Memorial Lecture series, is free and open to the public.