Mime in the Spotlight

This year’s live program was especially diverse: 420 artists from 30 countries showcased their performances​. Among them, several mimes and silent performers enchanted the audience with their craft. Some stayed true to the classic style of Marcel Marceau, while others incorporated modern and interactive elements—demonstrating that silence can often speak louder than words.

A highlight of the fair was the IKF Night, where the prestigious “Freiburger Leiter” award was presented. While this year’s prize went to a contemporary circus act, the presence of mime artists was undeniable​.

Conclusion: The Power of Silence

The IKF 2025 was a great success, proving that nonverbal theater is alive and thriving! If you are an event planner, agency, or cultural manager looking for an unforgettable act, consider mime. After all, it is often the quietest moments that leave the longest-lasting impressions.

See you at IKF 2026—of course, without words!

Defining Pantomime for Language Evolution Research

The authors also discuss how pantomime requires cognitive abilities like perspective-taking and how it could serve as a bridge to the development of conventional language. The work aims to structure and simplify terminology and discussion in language evolution research by proposing a clear distinction between gestural and pantomimic communication.

For pantomimes, this article could be particularly enlightening as it highlights the profound cognitive and communicative aspects of pantomime that go beyond traditional stage performance, offering insights into its evolutionary and communicative significance.

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Duo Mimikry

Duo Mimikry is a visual comedy and mime duo from Berlin, Germany. Elias Elastisch and Nicolas Rocher. They are storytellers, just like Marcel Marceau, the most famous of all, used to be. mime! Elias Elastisch and Nicolas Rocher

Orit Guttman and Roberto Gerboles

Ladri di Sogni

It is the fabulous story of Fairy and Fito, characters belonging to the world of dreams.
Caught stealing dreams, from the entity that produces them, our greedy characters will be expelled and
condemned to live in the real world… all to be discovered…

A dreamlike show, full of comedy where the poetry of the mime intertwines with the astuteness destined to fail, typical of clownish comedy, in a poetic context, where the shadows open their eyes to a magical world that is sometimes distant… but always present in each of us.

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All submissions are human-edited.

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All submissions are human-edited.

Duo Mimikry

We are the Duo Mimikry, two modern pantomimes who love their art form and breathe new life into it.
Whether a clumsy vampire, a ventriloquist and his cunning doll or Superman at the dentist: this is where things really get down to business. Black humor, innovative narrative techniques inspired by comics and film, the endless joy of transformation and the filling game with empty space are our tools. We don’t need an elaborate set design: two mimes, a few costumes and the audience.

When classic pantomime celebrates the poetry of movement, we add a new side to our art with a good pinch of black humor that hypnotically casts its spell on the viewer from the very first moment, amazes and makes him laugh.

Genre:
Mime, visual comedy

Stage languages:
Nonverbal

​RicoArt-Entertainment

RicoArt-Entertainment celebrates its 25th anniversary. With its professional pool of artists and the versatile CORONA suitable offers of walk acts (the camel and the little camels), living dolls, walking on stilts (living trees) and pantomime, we cover a wide spectrum for organizers.

Jean-Charles Deburau

Pierrot

Date: 1854–55

We owe the contemporary image of Pierrot to the famous mime Jean-Gaspard Baptiste Duburau, who replaced the ruff and wide white hat of the commedia dell’arte character with the long blank face and black skull cap that we recognize today. Charles Duburau, his son and also a mime, was asked by Nadar and his brother Adrien to pose for a series of “têtes d’expression” that would serve as publicity for the brothers’ struggling studio. The series was an enormous popular success

Pierrot in pain

Pierrot Running

 Date: 1854–55

During the time they worked together, the brothers Tournachon made a series of large photographs of Charles Debureau, son of Baptiste Debureau, the famous mime of the Théâtre des Funambules. These photographs attracted much public attention and won the gold medal at the Exposition Universelle of 1855 in Paris.

Designed as an elaborate publicity campaign for the photographers, the suite of more than fifteen photographs of characteristic expressions forms an episodic visual narrative of the comical misadventures of the pantomime character Pierrot. This photograph shows Pierrot in an attitude of pursuit or flight. Despite the immobility required by the relatively long exposure, the simulated movement is wonderfully expressed. A static, splayed demonstration of action in a shallow space, the picture’s content is as concise as a dictionary definition, its form as legible as that of a runner on a Greek vase.