Sounds of silence

Let’s get this out of the way right at the beginning: A lot of people can’t stand mimes.

BiLi (the stage name of Jeff Cabili) understands this.

“In the ‘70s and ‘80s, a lot of people had no training at all, and they started painting their faces and doing the ‘statue’ ” and other “street-mime” routines, BiLi said by phone from his Palo Alto, Calif., home.

“So the image of the mime in the ‘80s was not helped by all of these people,” he said. “They oversimplified the techniques of mime. It has put it into a connotation which is not very favorable.”

So it is no surprise that Spokane has not seen a true, theatrical mime show since the great Marcel Marceau played Expo ‘74.

Until now. BiLi follows in the Marceau tradition, having studied under a disciple of Marceau. His act is not street mime but “theater mime,” a tradition stretching back to the heyday of mimes in 19th-century France, and even further back to the ancient Roman pantomime.

BiLi performs in traditional face-paint and black costume and never, of course, utters a word.

“I want to show people that you can be entertained for an hour and a half just with a guy on stage who doesn’t say one word,” he said.

He does so through a series of skits of his own composition, each lasting from four to 15 minutes. Each will tell a story. Some will require audience participation. Recorded music will accompany many of the skits.

Many will be comic in nature, and all will be appropriate for kids over age 8. But not everything will be for comic effect.

“The mime is not a clown,” said BiLi. “He can be sad, happy, angry or fearful. He can be comical, too. I use a lot of humor. However, if I want the audience to appreciate the funny parts, I have to have some that aren’t, for contrast.”

BiLi was raised in France and moved to Palo Alto in 1975, where he first took mime classes under Stella Bensadon and Etienne Decroux. He left the United States in 1980 and went on to live and perform in Puerto Rico, France and other places around the world. He moved back to Palo Alto two years ago, where he teaches mime.

His visit to Spokane also included several workshops at Spokane Falls Community College earlier this week.