CHRISTIANS ARE GOD'S MIMES, COMMUNICATING THE GOSPEL THROUGH THE BODY OF CHRIST.

Mime is a form of physical theatre in which the performance relies on body language to communicate. Many people associate mime with silence, yet both visual and vocal communication can play a part in mime. Although voice and sound can be used, gesture and movement are the primary means of communication. One might define mime as Tony Montanaro does, in his book, Mime Spoken Here, as “physical eloquence.”

Mime is the eloquent and efficient delivery of a mood or a message in which the body is the primary instrument. … The theme may be abstract or literal, but if the artist delivers that theme eloquently he/she is a mime as far as I’m concerned.

The performer in mime may or may not use make-up. Let it just be noted that make-up is a kind of mask and the use of masks in theatre has a long history. Masks allow the performer to become anonymous so that attention is focused on what is being performed (persona) rather than who is performing (person).*

Some masks were designed in such a way as to amplify the voice of the performer so that when one speaks out or answers from under the mask it could be heard better by the audience. The actor, that is, the one putting on some persona other than one’s own person, was one who answers (-crite) from under (hypo-) the mask; in other words, the actor was called a hypocrite.
The word “hypocrite” has retained just the negative connotation of deceptive pretense, intentionally behaving to manipulate others’ perception of oneself. Thus has the acting profession acquired a less than positive reputation (although theatre people have done their share to earn it as well!). Putting on an act in public while acting otherwise in private is hypocritical.

Yet Christians, transformed into new persons by the renewal of the Holy Spirit (Romans 12:1-2), are called to put on the persona of Jesus Christ by becoming imitators (mimetai) of God, “just as Jesus himself loved us and gave himself up for us…” (Ephesians 5:1). Note the word for imitators, mimetai. Yes, it is from that Greek word that we get the word “mime.”

* Mask stems from the Arabic maskharat, meaning anything ridiculous like a fool; this word in turn is rooted in sakhira, to ridicule or laugh at. The word for mask in Latin is persona, from which we get the English word “person”; persona means “to sound (-sona) through (per-).” The word “person” is borrowed from the masks (personae) which in Roman comedies and tragedies were used to represent the people concerned. The Greeks called these masks prosopa from the fact that they were placed over the face, concealing the countenance in front of the eyes: para ton pros tous opas tithesthai (from being put up against the face). It was by the masks they put on that actors represented the Greek prosopa. Prosopon, which comes from pros ops, ‘about the eyes,” can be translated as both “face” and “person.”