m i m e s p e a k s

F you mention mime, people generally think of Marcel Marceau with his stripy top, leotard and white face – but most mime artists don’t look or dress like that nowadays,’ says Steve Murray, a mime artist of 26 years and the founder of Behold Mime Ministry.

‘When I’m performing, I wear a very basic costume of black trousers and a plain T-shirt. I never wear white make-up, because a lot of people have a phobia of clowns. And my mimes aren’t silent, because I perform to music and songs.

‘The preconceived idea is that mime artists are those annoying people pestering you in the street, but I see mime as a fabulous art form which has the power to make people laugh and cry and to draw them into a story.’

Since 1997 Steve has been travelling the world, performing his Christian-based mimes in theatres, churches and schools. Some of the pieces he has created are based on stories from the Bible, whereas others address contemporary issues such as fatherlessness and self-worth.

‘I perform a piece called “My Father’s Chair”, which explores our relationship with our earthly father but then points towards our heavenly Father, who loves us unconditionally,’ he explains. ‘Another piece I like to do is called “Food for Thought”, which is about the little boy in the Bible who gave his packed lunch to Jesus, enabling him to feed 5,000 people. In that mime, I add a bit of poetic licence by focusing on the boy’s perspective and how he saw the events of that day.

‘Whatever I’m performing, my heart is to get across a message of faith. It’s not about being in the “entertainment business”. I want to help people grow a little closer to God.’

Before Covid hit in 2020, many of Steve’s performances took place in secondary schools, where he used his mimes to prompt pupil discussions on subjects such as identity and peer pressure. At the end of every session, he remembers, teenagers would be lining up to talk to him.

‘Mime often brings a lot of emotional baggage to the surface,’ he says. ‘And it can really make you think. When you’re watching a film, everything is laid out for you on screen. But with mime, nothing is force-fed. The audience have to create the character’s world in their own mind, because there isn’t anything else on stage to look at. And when a person’s brain starts to fill those gaps, their emotions become vulnerable because they are so absorbed in the story.

‘Through the type of work I do, people are seeing Bible stories delivered in a completely different way from what they expect. That’s why I feel mime has such a lot of value.’

Today Steve has about 30 mime pieces in his performance repertoire. Some are funny, others are serious. Most are a few minutes long, but some last for about 15 minutes. He sees mime as his Christian ministry – but, for many years, the art form wasn’t even on his radar.

‘Mime wasn’t something I thought about when I was growing up,’ he says. ‘But when I was in my 20s, I was made redundant from my job in a jeweller’s, and someone at church said to me that God had given her a vision in which I had a white face and people were stood around me. She didn’t understand what it meant – and neither did I. So I said thank you and just left it at that.

‘A couple of weeks later I was talking to another friend from church who said he had a gift for me which would change my life. I hoped it would be a car or cheque. But then he put on a video of the