Middle School Miming: Preparatory Skills

Miming is a great topic for middle school drama students. The art of miming uses the actors’ bodies and imaginations to tell a story, without using their voices. It’s all about “making the unreal, real” through thoughtful and purposeful movements. But before we jump into mime work, students need to learn and practice three preparatory skills: embracing stillness, developing their focus, and visualization. These skills will help students prepare their bodies and brains to explore different miming exercises.

1. Stillness

It can be challenging for students to practice stillness, as they are generally hardwired to move, wiggle, and fidget. But it’s a skill that can be practiced, and can be used in so many situations.

All miming exercises should start with stillness. This allows students time to breathe, ground, and centre themselves before starting into purposeful mimed movements. To work on stillness, start by reviewing and practicing “neutral position”. As a reminder, it’s a body position where the actor is standing with their feet flat on the floor, about shoulder-width apart, knees relaxed (not locked), back straight, arms and hands by their sides, looking forward without any facial expressions, and silent. You may also have students use a seated neutral position. A seated neutral position is where the actor sits in a chair or stool with their feet flat on the floor, back straight, hands placed gently on thighs, looking forward without any facial expressions, and silent. Blinking and breathing is always allowed!

Have students practice standing or sitting in neutral for short periods of time. Start really small, like 10 seconds of stillness and silence. In between practice sessions, encourage students to move and shake their wiggles out. Then gradually build up to longer increments of time. You can also try having students start in neutral for a count of 5, move slowly over the count of 5 into a specific pose, hold the pose for 5, and then move slowly back into neutral over a count of 5 again. Repeat as many times as you wish.

2. Focus

The classic mirror exercise is a great way for students to practice focus. It’s a drama class standard for a reason! Students partner up and face each other. One student acts as the leader, moving their arms, hands, head, and face in slow and steady patterns so that they can be “mirrored” by their partner. The emphasis on slow and steady is key for students to focus on precision and exact movements — looking at details all the way down to the fingertips, and making each movement purposeful. The goal for the follower is to copy the leader exactly — if someone were to watch the pair, they wouldn’t know who was leading.

Start this exercise with having students stand with their feet planted, so it’s one less movement they have to think about. It’s also a good way for students to practice stillness in their lower bodies. Once students are demonstrating good focus and precision with just their upper bodies, you can add in lower body movements (legs, feet, hips).

Once students feel more confident with the pair mirror exercise, add a layer of challenge by having them make groups of four and complete the exercise in a diamond shape.

3. Visualization

In mime work, any “props” are invisible — just air. To convince an audience that the mime is actually interacting with a real item (a flower, a rope, a gift box, a door, and so on), students need to make their movements precise and purposeful. To help them do this, they need to visualize the item. Visualization is to imagine or “see” something in your brain, or mind’s eye. If students have a clear picture in their heads of what the item they’re portraying looks and feels like, that really helps them to bring it to life through their movements.

Students can practice visualizing by having the teacher lead them through a guided visualization experience. As a bonus, it’s a great way to practice stillness and focus at the same time!

Have students sit comfortably in the room, where they can hear you easily. If they feel safe to do so, they can close their eyes; otherwise, have them choose a focus spot in the room to softly gaze at. Choose a familiar object, for example, an ice cream cone. Then, have your students listen intently as you describe the item in detail, using all five senses to create an image in their mind’s eye. For the ice cream example, you could describe the size and shape of the ice cream cone, the choices of toppings, the feeling of the melting ice cream touching your hand as you grip the cone, the coldness on your tongue as you take that delicious first bite. Leave some details open to the students’ choices. For example, you might suggest that the ice cream is your students’ favourite flavour.

Then, with students still seated and with the images still clear in their minds, they can start to explore some small movements associated with the item, such as holding the imaginary cone in their hand, taking a bite and savouring the taste, or wiping a drip of melted ice cream off their hand.

All those sensory details, combined with students filling in their own personal details, will help them to create a super-clear picture in their mind. When students are in the midst of visualizing an object for actual miming activities, they won’t take this much time or go into this level of detail in those moments, but this is a way to introduce them to visualizing and help them develop those visualization skills. When they’re able to clearly visualize an object, it will be that much easier for them to portray the item through their movements for an audience.

We’ll be exploring this in upcoming articles, so stay tuned!