Etienne Decroux and His Theatre Laboratory is based on the long-awaited translation of Marco De Marinis' monumental work on mime in the twentieth century: Mimo e teatro nel Novecento (1993). Now revised and updated, the volume focuses specifically on the seminal role played by French mime artist and pedagogue Etienne Decroux.
Mime is a theatrical form of ancient tradition. In the nineteenth century, it saw both apogee and crisis in the west with the realistic and gesticulating 'white pantomime'. In the twentieth century, it underwent a radical overhaul, transforming into an 'abstract' corporeal art that shunned imitation and narrative, and which instead tended towards the plastic, elliptic, allusive, and symbolic transposition of actions and situations.
