Miss Nini Theilade

Morning Post, 7 June 1934

Unusually, I have included an article which does not mention Miss Mawer. However, the newspaper clipping is in Miss Mawer’s private collection – so it must have been important to her. Further down the clipping, she has underlined a paragraph, which gives us the clue as to what was in her mind.

I think it is worth copying out some of the first two paragraphs, even though they are not directly about Miss Mawer. They are about mime and it is interesting to look at the context – it is approximately six months since Irene Mawer opened the Institute of Mime.

The newspaper article reads “Among the joyous discoveries of Mr Sydney Carroll’s new experiment of open-air ballet in Regent’s Park has been the magic of mime. The abiding paradox that in certain phases of simple drama one can get more beauty of expression, instead of less, by the absence of speech finds itself perculiarly (sic) true of the ‘fête champêtre’ which Regent’s Park provides.

In the open air, with music straying on the breeze, and birds’ songs and rustling eaves and the soft patter of feet upon grass, one’s nerves are so cushioned in charming sounds already that speech has to be really wonderful to be worth while.”

The writer then goes on to talk about two mimes – neither of whom I had heard about before: Miss Nini Theilade (from Denmark) and “…her great compatriot, Mme. Adeline Genée.” Through Nini Theilade, mime found itself reborn. Miss Theilade performed in the open air show at Regent’s Park, “…ranging through the whole gamut of the art of mime…”

The writer continued with praise for the art form “Let the music, the choreography, and the decoration be what they will, the human and dramatic element – the dumb-show telling of a story – is, and must be, the main thing.”

Finally, at the end of the piece, we have the clue that Miss Mawer left for us. She has underlined the following sentences: “No better proof of the efficacy of mime could well be found than the career of L’Enfant Prodigue, greatest of all mime-plays, which we are to see at the Westminster on Sunday week.” This, of course, was Irene Mawer’s performance.

Nothing more was said about the show, or about Irene, but I do like the notes given about L’Enfant, which I haven’t seen explained quite so well anywhere else: “It was originally a full-fledged drama, with dialogue by Michel Carré. At rehearsal, however, the Wormser music and the story itself proved so all-sufficing that, with Carré’s full sanction, the talk was whittled down little by little until there was none left at all.” Fascinating.