Mime goes 'Beyond Words'


When Bill Bowers met Anna Deavere Smith, the first question the acclaimed writer and dramaturgist asked him was, "Why are you a mime?"

Mime Bill Bowers will present his show "It Goes Without Saying" for one night only in December as a fundraiser for the Asolo Repertory Theater./ Courtesy Photo

Answering that question not only led Bowers to begin writing, but eventually supplied him with the material for several successful stage shows, one of which he performed to a sold-out house at the Historic Asolo Theater last season.

"Beyond Words," Bowers' latest vehicle, opened at Urban Stages in New York City last month and was immediately heralded as another successful production drawing on his life story as a gay young man growing up under the vast skies of Montana who finds his true voice as a mime. Additional shows were added to meet demand for the 80-minute combination of mime and monologue.

But it is "It Goes Without Saying" – the show he performed here last season and will repeat in a one-show-only fundraiser for the Asolo Repertory Theatre on Dec. 9 – that Bowers dedicates to Deavere Smith, as well as to his late mother, Verne Bowers.

"I really credit Anna for making me into a writer because I never imagined myself as one," said Bowers by phone from his New York City apartment on a day off from his current show. "The question she asked, coming out of such an intense interrogator, made me look at it in a way I never had."

As for his mother, "I realize more and more now that she's gone that she's really the person who directed me," said Bowers, whose mother died five years ago. "My family was so removed from anything artistic, but she bought me my first ticket to see Marcel Marceau. She knew what she was doing."

It was in going through his mother's possessions after her death that he came across a poem that proved to be the catalyst for his current show. Written in 1954, it came home with him from the hospital, pinned to his little blue blanket. Titled "What is a boy?" it is "along the lines of 'snakes and snails and puppy dog tails,' but much longer and actually awful," said Bowers, describing its stereotypical male images.

Bowers says being gay and growing up in Montana were two formative influences on his life and career./ Courtesy photo.

"You know...boys have no feelings, girls hate them, boys shouldn't cry," he said. "So the play begins with that and moves into a series of stories, some from my life and some not, exploring what it is to be a boy and what boys learn about becoming men."

"It Goes Without Saying," however, focuses more personally on an answer to the question Deavere Smith first posed. (Read about that production, as well as a review of Bowers' performances here last year.)

In an effort to prod Bowers into even greater depths of self-revelation, we decided to ask him five more probing questions:

Q: What is the ONE most difficult thing about being a mime?

A: Being asked to do 'the wall.' It's usually the first thing people say or ask when they find out I'm a mime. I get it, oh my god, I don't know how often. I've almost stopped hearing it because I'm trying so hard to circumvent the question. It's what everyone knows of mime and everyone can kind of half do. I've tried so hard to be patient about that, but as I get older, it's harder and harder.

Q: What are the TWO shows you wish you could be in?

A: The first one would be "The Drowsy Chaperone." It's a Broadway musical from about five years ago and even before I saw it people were telling me, there's a part that's absolutely you. I did audition and I got right down to the end to replace the originator, but I didn't get it. I would still do it in a second. The character is a very lonely, self-effacing, funny man who lives in this sad walk-up apartment and sits in a chair listening to musicals; he's a fount of information about these obscure musicals and one of them is "The Drowsy Chaperone." The characters from the play start to appear in his apartment. It's very funny, poetic and charming.

Bill Bowers / Courtesy photo

The other is a big dream, but I'd like to be in Charlie Chaplin's film, "The Kid." I loved that one.

Q: What were the THREE biggest influences on your career?

A:Being gay is probably No. 1. Then being from Montana. And the third I would say, is my interest in music, usually alternative, not popular. Growing up, I listened to early folk music, political folk, bluegrass, although I did listen to the Carpenters a lot when I was young. I loved them and Karen Carpenter is in my new show; lip syncing to Karen Carpenter while singing into a hairbrush was one of my great escapes.

Q: Who are the FOUR people who have most influenced your career?

A: Charlie Chaplin. Marcel Marceau. My art teacher in high school, Lela Autio. She's in her 80s now but whenever I go home I still see her. She was kind of a rebel against authority and she helped me shape my politics and look at the world as an artist.

The fourth? I guess I might say my gramma, who I talk about a bit in my show. She died when I was six, but she was a schoolteacher and the only person in my family who went to college. I remember her talking about being in a play in college and (because she went to an all-girl school) playing a man. I thought she was so exotic and so brilliant.

A: What are the FIVE words even a mime can't do without?

A: Let's see...How about, WHEN CAN I EXPECT PAYMENT?



IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING. Bill Bowers. 7 p.m. Dec. 9 at the Historic Asolo Theater of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, 5401 Bay Shore Road. Tickets, which include the performance and a post-performance reception with the artist, are $75. Call 351-8000 or go to www.asolorep.org/conservatory.




Carrie Seidman

Dance/arts critic, Sarasota Herald Tribune
Last modified: October 27, 2011