The Art of Silence

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Archive on 4: The Art of Silence

BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4, The Art of Silence

Marcel Marceau's daughters tell the remarkable story of his life in the French Resistance.

Mime artist Marcel Marceau's daughters tell the remarkable story of their father's life as a Jewish teenager in the French Resistance and how this influenced his art of silence.

A radio programme about mime seems like a contradiction in terms... but Marcel Marceau had so much to say.

When the entire population of Strasbourg was evacuated in September 1939, the Mangel family was sent to the south of France. Marcel attended art school in Limoges and, alongside his older brother Alain and several of his cousins, joined multiple resistance networks. 

He changed his surname to Marceau and began a life in the underground. Still a teenager, he risked his own life many times to help save Jewish refugee children, predominantly through a relief charity called the OSE - Oeuvre de secours aux enfants. Marcel's own father Charles Mangel, a kosher butcher originally from Poland, was arrested in early 1944 and murdered in Auschwitz. 

His cousin Georges Loinger arranged for Marcel to hide from the Gestapo at a radical orphanage outside Paris where he worked as a drama teacher while also beginning classes at the Charles Dullin theatre school in occupied Paris. This is where he made the crucial decision to focus on mime - an art form he'd loved since discovering the films of Charlie Chaplin as a child. 

After Paris was liberated, he joined the French army and his first big performance as a mime artist was to American GIs. Over the next 60 years, Marceau would become world famous as the 20th century's best known and most celebrated proponent of mime.  

Marcel rarely spoke about his wartime experiences but he did write a manuscript titled "Histoire de ma vie. De 1923 jusqu’en 1952" which he entrusted to his two daughters Aurélia - an actor -and Camille - an artist - before his death in 2007.  To mark the centenary of his birth this year, it was published in France by Actes Sud.

In this programme, Aurélia and Camille reveal some of the remarkable stories from the manuscript in addition to linking these experiences with his artistic development and his decision to choose an art form performed in silence, only aided occasionally by music and sound effects. 

Contributors;
Nola Rae, mime artist and former student of Marceau.
Tamar Nezer-Loinger whose mother Fanny was Marcel's cousin and was a resistance fighter who saved 500 Jewish children. 
Carol Mann, a sociologist whose mother Rose was also Marcel's cousin. She is the author of "Le mime Marceau, sa cousine Rose, le Yiddish, et moi".
French Film director Michel Leclerc whose mother was saved by Marcel Marceau.
Dr Betty Felenbok, a retired biologist who was hidden aged 5 at La Maison d'enfants de Sèvres orphanage outside Paris where Marceau also hid as a drama teacher.
Dr Hillel Kieval, Goldstein Professor Emeritus of Jewish History and Thought at Washington University in St. Louis.
Jeanine Thompson, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Theatre, Film, and Media Arts at Ohio State University.


With thanks to Robert Leopold, archivist for La Maison d'enfants de Sèvres; the Wallenberg Legacy for allowing the use of Marcel Marceau's 2001 Wallenberg Medal acceptance speech at the University of Michigan; the Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute at Ohio State University who digitised the video of "Bip Remembers" especially for this programme.

Producer: Victoria Ferran
Executive Producer: Susan Marling
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