“Iwant the audience to feel as if they’ve stepped into a time machine, gone backto 1912, and are sitting on a Charlie Chaplin movie set, watching the actors,”says Alice Wilson of her brainchild the Marvelous Unspeaking Troupe ofEntertaining Scoundrels (M.U.T.E.S.).
Inspired by the silent film era and vaudeville, these actors dress in black,white, and grey and adorn themselves with the makeup typical of actors of thisperiod and genre. Founded in April, they perform original skits, relatingstories without benefit of their voices. True, also, to silent films, theyuse caption cards to aid their tale telling. These entertaining, comedic showsare all written by the troupe, both solely and as collaborative efforts. Exaggerated expressions and movements are used to communicate. “In thisera, they didn’t have the technology to pick up the sound of speech, so theactors had to depend on what their faces and bodies could do,” says Wilson.
This group of 8 has performed at a variety of venues, including shows with theBrew City Bombshells (burlesque troupe) at Stonefly and Club Garibaldi, the VicMilford benefit show at the Hilton, and Bloomin’ Days in Kenosha. “Sometimes we’re ‘roving’entertainment at festivals. For those, we literally run over and gestureto people to get them to come over and watch us,”says Wilson. “Weare able to tweak our skits to be bawdy and adult or we can remove all of thatand make them family-friendly. We tailor our act to fit the audience wethink we’re going to have,” she says.
What’s the difference between M.U.T.E.S. and mimes? “We really act anduse props, we don’t just pretend things are there,” says Wilson. Also, the mimicking behavior ofmimes is not this group’s style. “Sometimes they (mimes) invade peoples’personal space, and that’s not the idea,” according to Wilson.
There is also an element of audience interaction that keeps thingsinteresting. “It’s so much fun to work with the audience, you just look atone of them (audience members) and wink or something, there are a lot ofsituations where they’re ‘in on the joke’,” says FJosh Redbeard, one of thetroupe’s newer members.
“I think that silent films are a wonderful medium because actors had to relyonly on expression and movement. We’re trying to resurrect the era bybreathing new life into this style, trying to bring this type of acting to acontemporary audience in a contemporary way,” says Wilson.
Upcoming opportunities for you to see these scoundrels in action include theArtbeat show at the Hide House in Bay View on 9 October.
For more information, check the M.U.T.E.S. myspace page, www.myspace.com/themutesmke.
