Heartbeat mime troupe


Heartbeat Mime Troupe
OVERVIEW: Our motivation and message is real love. The theme of most of our skits is real love including: peace, reconciliation, self-sacrifice, generosity, altruism, impartiality, respect, sharing and humility. Some skits touch on serious social problems such as: greed, loneliness, suicide, drug abuse, domestic violence, bullying and war. Our 2 main teachers have received instruction from 2 professional mimes who trained with Marcel Marceau. Our mimes have performed in Turkey, Poland, Mexico, Romania and the US.

Heartbeat Pantomime Videos Heartbeat Pantomime Photos
	In 2008 our mime troupe was started in Izmir, Turkey. Now we are based in Istanbul. The central theme of our performances is real love. We emphasize that giving is better than taking. We stress a love which gives above and beyond the requirements of law, social mores or expected reciprocal gain. Many of the skits incorporate humor, often by exposing the short sightedness of egocentric pretense. The child-like innocence of the mime can soften prejudices and gently uncover unperceived reality to the viewers’ heart.

The vision for this troupe started with personal tragedy. In 2006 the mother of one of the troupes' founders was killed after being hit by a truck while jogging near her home. The founder, after some searching of heart, realized how little he knew about real love and close relationships. As he began to pursue love he experienced a new joy and a desire to share this love with others.

Marcel Marceau called Pantomime "the language of the heart". As such, it seemed that pantomime would be an ideal art form to stir up longings for love in the hearts of others. Pantomime communicates across barriers of culture, age, gender, ideology, ethnicity, language, mental capacity, social class & even hearing capacity. Research has suggested that only 7% of communication is contained in the words we use. Our pantomime work has confirmed to us how effective non-verbal communication can be.

Pantomime is a gentle art. It can be performed in public squares and marketplaces without disrupting civil order or commerce. It does not force its way into the mind of the passer-by without their full consent. Our pantomime skits are inspired by everyday life, time-tested proverbs and ancient wisdom. The art of pantomime forces the performer to reduce her gestures and expressions to those that are part of the shared experiences of all people. Interpretation is left to the mind of the observer based on his own experience. For example, in a skit where musical instruments are "suggested," the performer was thinking of a guitar, but a man in the audience saw a saz (a popular stringed instrument in Turkey). Neutral tones (black & white), long sleeved shirts, pants and caps that cover the skin and hair minimize physical differences in the performers. The art of pantomime amplifies the fact that people have much more in common than we might commonly think.

Our mime teachers have received training at "The School of Modern Mime" in Warsaw, Poland by Gregg Goldston (founder of the Goldston School for Mimes) & Bartlomiej Ostapczuk (founder of the Mimo Theatre and Warsaw Mime Center). Both of these mime instructors have worked as training assistants with Marcel Marceau. We train volunteers from Turkey and other nations. For those who participate, it is an opportunity to overcome self-consciousness in front of people. They experience being part of a multicultural group working together to spread real love. We have worked with and trained volunteers from Turkey, Romania, S. Korea, Mexico, Honduras, India and the USA. A public school teacher from Romania, who came for the training, has now trained some of her students in basic mime skills. They perform for other children including those with disabilities. She was able to channel the energy of some of her most difficult students into something beneficial to others.

We have been invited to perform in a children’s hospital for those with cancer and other serious illnesses. We have also had the privilege of giving free mime training to members of a non-profit group that seeks to bring happiness to children in several hospitals.

WHY IS OUR GROUP CALLED "HEART BEAT"?

The troupe was started by a married couple. Before moving to Turkey in 1997 one of the founders was an expert in restarting hearts. He used to teach classes to doctors and nurses about how to bring people back to life after their hearts had stopped beating (Advanced Cardiac Life Support). Heart disease (including vascular disease) is the leading cause of death in the world. It kills more people than cancer, AIDS, malaria and TB combined. For example in Turkey it is the cause of 1 death every 2 minutes and in the US 2 deaths per minute.

Heart disease can be slowed down with a few simple lifestyle changes. For example, quitting smoking and replacing unhealthy fats with healthy ones greatly lowers the risk of heart attack and stroke. This is why the troupe’s founder has promoted Turkish olive oil as the "oldest natural remedy for the world’s biggest killer."

But humanity has a deeper kind of heart trouble that is not so easy to cure; not just decay in our coronary muscle or clogged arteries, but a malignant pathology in the deepest part of our being. We see the symptoms all around: depression and suicide, stress and unhappiness, family strife and breakup, breakdown of trust followed by economic crisis, injustice and oppression, destruction of our environment, violent crime and war. The love of many people has grown cold. Instead of hearts of flesh, it is as if our hearts have turned to stone. This condition is so common we have come to see it as normal. But it is not. Sometimes we try to numb our hearts with non-stop media consumption, superficial relationships, drugs & alcohol, and seeking pleasure or comfort. Through education, economics, politics, science and religion we have relieved some of the symptoms, but these all fail to get to the core of the problem. We need to have our dead hearts restarted. We need hearts that can love again.

Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, envisioned a planet where there would be "peace at home and peace in the world". Lasting peace starts in the hearts of individuals and spreads to their families, neighbors, communities, nations and beyond. Peace and love must first reign in our own hearts. While some cast blame and promote hate against some external enemy, the real enemy is within. An ancient Middle Eastern proverb says, “He who rules over his own spirit is better than he who captures a city.” The biggest battles we all face are inside. In our hearts, truth wages war against lies and lies seek to overcome the truth; Love fights against indifference, selfishness and fear. Joy and boredom wage war, as do peace and anxiety; patience and anger; kindness and lust; generosity and greed; mercy and hatred; gentleness and arrogance; goodness and laziness. All these wage war within us.
	Watching a pantomime performance cannot revitalize a stone cold heart, but it can ignite hope; hope that comes from knowing "I am not alone." "Each heart knows its own bitterness and a stranger does not share its joy." says another ancient proverb. There is something built into heart muscle cells that causes them to beat in unison. Scientists have taken two heart cells that were beating at different rates and placed them in contact with each other. They found that the cells synchronize and begin to beat at the same rhythm. In pantomime communication is heart to heart. Mime artist and viewer can touch in that secret place, speaking only the language of the heart. Deep joy, sorrow, humor, truth and love can reach, as it were, directly into the heart of the viewer, as he interprets the meaning quietly in his own thoughts.

The aim of the "Heart Beat" mime troupe is to see cold hearts revived. The mime plays we perform are not seeking to reach the healthy, but those who know that their hearts are badly broken; hearts which are troubled and loaded down with burdens. Our aim is to stir people to ask themselves deep questions that will lead them to seek a restarted heart, a heart that can give and experience genuine love. This is why we give out "love rocks" and host "love talks" for those whose hearts have been touched.

(Warning: in the next paragraph we talk about God... so if you are an atheist you may find this hard to take.) We also been conducting personal interviews as part of the research we are doing for a book on real love. The fact that all of us desire to give and receive love is one of the strongest evidences that we were made to love by a God who is love. One of the founders of the Heartbeat Mime Troupe was formerly an atheist, but his doubts about the non-existence of God were confirmed when He found that a personal relationship with God was possible. Understanding and experiencing the kindness and patience of God, receiving forgiveness and new life from God, are the foundation for living a life of real love. We have found that the more we have gotten to know this God the more our lives have been filled with hope, joy and peace. A God who loves His enemies and who loves those who are helpless is the only One who can rescue us from ourselves and our own destructive selfishness. It is our hope that your heart has been stirred to know more about this God. Being religious is not enough. One of the best places to start is by reading the life story of the man who has inspired love more than anyone else in history. This man's Sermon on the Mount and teaching inspired some of the most loving people of the past 100 years: Gandhi , Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa. You can read his life story here: Good New by John or Good News by John audio.


	COST: We start with the most basic raw materials, our time and physical presence, with very few props and we offer our art for free. All of our performers are volunteers and all of our work is done on a volunteer basis. As we have freely received all that we have, it is our privilege to be able to freely give.
	INVITATION: If all this sounds like idealistic nonsense to you, please feel free to just ignore us. Since we communicate silently, we are pretty easy to ignore. But if you feel something inside your heart that is beating in sync with our vision, please join us. We’d love to meet you, to share a cup of tea. All are welcome to visit our "love talks". We have a troupe we trained in the San Francisco Bay Area and one in Istanbul, Turkey where we now live. We would love to come and perform our art in your community or for your group.
with love, D&A (Dennis & Alexandra McGee)

We want to express special thanks to Pantomime Pablo Zibes for including information about our work on his pantomime web site.