Grant Bashore's job as a lawyer makes him a better mime.
As a criminal lawyer, he spends lots of time with clients in jail. He finds his work deeply informs his artistic side.
"I have had the luck to be in close contact with people that are desperate, and one really learns about the human being doing this," said Bashore.
"One develops an appreciation of how fragile we all are. Everyone has a weakness and a beauty, and as a mime I can translate these experiences and try to create images and stories that reach everyone."
Bashore's solo performance of nontraditional mime, "Mimesis," is at Zuzi's Theater this weekend.
"I feel very privileged because I can take advantage of both worlds and express myself during the day using the brain and mouth, and at night in the theater with the body to communicate with people," said Bashore, 46.
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Mime is not just child's play, he said. In fact, this show contains serious, and topical, subjects.
"I have, for example, in this program three numbers that are called 'Canto al Inmigrante, I, II and III' (Song to the Immigrant) that tell the story of the immigrant that crosses and makes his pilgrimage to another country and the struggle that that is for so many people," said Bashore, who also has a background in acting.
Because he practices nontraditional pantomime, he rarely paints his face white and he includes some musical pieces. This new style in the art form has developed in Europe and the United States, and has come to define what constitutes a theatrical mime.
Bashore said that one of the challenges that professional mimes face is the stereotype the public has of the "mime with the white face stuck in his box."
"The art of mime is a lot broader than that," he said. "It is an art that is expressed in a theater, that tells stories, that attempts to fill the void between acting and dancing."
A lifelong lover of mime, Bashore has studied it intermittently since he was a young boy.
These days, he works and collaborates with Rick Wamer and is a member of Wamer's Tucson-based Theatrical Mime Theatre. Wamer is a good mentor for Bashore — he studied with the late mime great, Marcel Marceau.
Wamer, the director of a local school for mimes, helped with the production of the show and highlighted Bashore's talent. "He's a really beautiful performer. He's got a sensibility and a sincerity on stage in his work that I just really appreciate very much," said Wamer. "He has a nice sense of comic timing at times that I really think is going to serve well in some of his pieces with his comic characters."
Preview
"Mimesis"
• When: 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday.
• Where: Zuzi's Theater, 738 N. Fifth Ave.
• Cost: $15, with discounts available.
• Tickets: 631-8100, at the door or at www.grantbashore.com.
• Online: www. theatricalmimetheatre.org.
A little mime history
The mime was born in pre-roman and pre-greek times when civilizations conquered other cultures. The conquering communities entertained the other cultures through silent mythical performances narrated in the local language.
Later in Italy there was a movement that promoted comedy in art, with which pantomime was incorporated and the image of the clown was solidified.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the modern mime developed thanks to a movement that rejected the use of words, certain types of clothing and props in presentations.
With the movement of break dancing in the 1970s, elements of the mime were adopted (like the painting of the face or the robot imitations), by dancers and street artists to make money. This and other reasons caused the propagation of the mime stereotype that professional mimes battle today.
