“Why is a laugh similar to a cry?” asks Kari Pederson, who explores the idea with co-director Adam Paolozza in their mostly silent production at The Theatre Centre.

By: Rowan Flood

Named one of 2021’s top 10 shows in Montreal by the Montreal Gazette, Italian Mime Suicide came to Toronto this spring. The show, which remains silent for most of its duration, follows a mime who is deeply hurt when he believes his craft is not appreciated. Yet as an artistic endeavour, it holds much more. 

In an interview with CanCulture, the directors, Kari Pederson and Adam Paolozza, explain how the production examines the way we perceive and express sadness, laughter and ways to be silly. It also explores the hard question that has become even more demanding throughout the pandemic: “Why do I keep making the art that I make when it feels kind of hopeless or doesn’t seem like anyone’s interested?” said Paolozza. The questions that are explored throughout the show and the ones it asks the viewers make it a commanding piece of work.

It can be hard to detect emotions and energy through a screen, but Pederson’s and Paolozza’s were unmistakable as we came together over Zoom. The two co-directors of the production Italian Mime Suicide felt much respect and admiration for each other as they spoke. Pederson entered the meeting first, smiling when she got a text from Paolozza saying he would be a couple of minutes late, and Paolozza came second with a cup of coffee ready in hand. As we began to talk, the two filled each other’s sentences to add importance to the humbly spoken phrases and remind one another of missed points and achievements. The care they felt towards each other continued with their apparent devotion to their production. Paolozza emphasized how Pederson “lifted it up and made it what it was.” Pederson reminded Paolozza of how his Italian heritage and time spent at l’Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques Lecoq impacted his desire to create the play.

Italian Mime Suicide was first formed in 2016 and showed in Montreal last year before arriving in Toronto. The show opened to the public on April 23 at The Theatre Center and welcomed an excited crowd. People hugged and greeted one another warmly yet tentatively. The feeling of coming to see a live show was unfamiliar to some after two years of an isolating pandemic. I overheard a woman ask her friend when she sat down, “Is this too close? Yet the atmosphere was hopeful, and he responded, “oh no,” as she sat down close to catch up. The lobby and cafeteria quickly filled as the starting hour approached, and many people seemed to know each other as voices rose in recognition. 

A 2003 article about an Italian mime who died by suicide inspired this artistic project, explained Paolozza. Although the headline is dismal and going on twenty years old, it remains poignant and finds relevance to this day through Pederson and Paolozza’s captivating show. When we spoke, our conversation covered how this show began, how beauty is found with and through sadness, and what this play means for the two directors.

What first sparked the interest to create Italian Mime Suicide?

Paolozza: When I got back from theatre school I really wanted to make a show about mime. I was looking for a subject matter and my friend sent me an article. It was a really short obituary. The headline was “Italian Mime Suicide,” and that’s where I got the title. I thought that was an intriguing title — kind of funny, kind of sad, this tragic comic thing. It stuck with me. Over the years I kept trying to think of a good context, a good way to expand on that and it really started to come together when Kari joined in 2015. I’ve always liked mime but I’m aware you get teased sometimes. There is a kind of cringe factor that Kari and I were interested in exploring as also part of the audience experience. 

Pederson: If I could expand, it wasn’t just theatre school, it was Lecoq. It is a physical style of theatre but some people refer to it as “Mime School.” Adam is also half Italian and I think that’s a little more context of why it rang a little more true at that time. I came in as a stand in and when we started working we tried to find the meat of the project. We realized the meat isn’t necessarily the true story of a man, we didn’t even know him. What rang true or what was interesting about this title was that tragic comic. There’s this fine line, and why does mime sit on that fine line? How does that fine line live in us? Why is a laugh similar to a cry? Why is sadness sweet sometimes? With mime, in particular, it’s both. It’s cringeworthy but I love it. 

Do you feel you found something you personally related to in this story?

Pederson: Yeah, even though on paper I don’t come from a circus or mime background, I do come from performance and dance. Even my thesis research is about performance. Specifically, how deep, internal, unconscious acts of mimesis actually shape who we are, how becoming is relational. We only become who we are through our relations to others. I think theatre does that. With research on kinesthesia they found that when audiences are watching dancers or performers, similar synapses are figuring in their own brains. That’s happening even in an audience of Italian Mime Suicide. What was really exciting to me was more so these deeper or esoteric hooks. On top of that we really had great performers.

Paolozza: I wanted to make a show that could put some of those things like Kari was saying, that are sweet but also sickly sweet, on stage. Similar to Kari, I’m interested in people’s bodies and their personalities. For us, it was important to have the different body shapes in actors. Kari also has a background in visual arts studies. There is a sense of how the image is constructed, sculpturally, with light. That also really attracted me to the work.

I’m interested in this thing between clown and mime. We like to make people feel safe to be silly, and see what comes out of their personalities. I really want to find a way that silliness can be taken more seriously. When you have less words there’s more space to relate to a piece in a different way. 

What makes bodily gestures so significant, specifically in performances with minimal speech?

Paolozza: One thing I really took away from school is, how do you create the space out of which text arises? All of the relations of the bodies and all that before language arises is a rich territory to explore for drama. In that grounding, the gestures have a slightly different meaning. I think we relate to that, if you’re waiting for the bus or waiting at a dentist office. It’s a very archaic way that we read each other, the way we move, the inclination of the head. We wanted to create more space to explore that. I also just love the expressive body. Something I’m interested in exploring is the invisible gesture. Every work proposes to an audience what it’s trying to do, maybe in an unspoken way. It’s engaging with certain questions and I think that’s the deeper gesture. It’s not a physical gesture, it’s more the intention of the creators. The gesture for us is the relation between seemingly opposite things. Sadness or laughter.

Pederson: In this context the importance of gesture in live performance especially in Italian Mime Suicide, where there are words and narrative but it’s not so much spoken by the characters in the show, it doesn’t run it. Our approach was more similar to visual arts, where we want to create an image, and then we want to live in the image. Rather than telling a story with our words the approach was more about bringing a living image.  A gesture is an embodiment of surroundings. I think that’s the heartbeat of the show.

Was there a vision for what you hoped or wanted people to walk away with after seeing the production?

Pederson: I think we had hopes. Speaking of gesture, in some ways this show is our gesture for the audience. You can never know what someone is going to walk away with. Everybody has different tastes, different expectations. I think we wanted it to be sweet, even though it was funny, we wanted it to be something real, slightly reverent. We were unafraid of the absurd. If an idea came up as we were divising, if it made us laugh out loud and shake our heads we were like “”hmmmm?” 

Paolozza:  There’s a hope there to get the audience in a space where they feel okay to enjoy things that are in some sense are childhood things. A lot of the clown work relies on that childlike naivete. You don’t realize you look silly, and being comfortable in your own imbalance. That tender thing that Kari is talking about, it’s trying to give that feeling to the audience. Giving them that assurance, that it’s okay to laugh, if we are acting silly it creates more safety for that softness between people. 

How does the play or can the play have relevance to what’s happening now in the world as we come out of a pandemic and things are opening up?

Paolozza: The questions in the show are the same: Why do I keep making the art that I make when it feels kind of hopeless or doesn’t seem like anyones interested? All artists, probably all people, struggle with that existential question. Something about saying that now, after the pandemic — being in public, hearing live music, being able to laugh — I think it has given it a different poignancy. It’s cool to see how a show changes. We’re grateful that the searching and the questioning of the show is connecting to people. 

Pederson: I think the catharsis feels sharper now. We’ve collectively gone through this thing. Probably most people would say these past two years have been harder than others.

What have you learned or taken away through creating this show?

Paolozza: There was a lot of trusting or trying to trust that things would work out. Trusting that people know what they’re doing, that they’re going to bring their A-game, giving them agency. It’s not a new thing that I’ve learned but an experience I’m grateful for. I’m really grateful to my collaborators. To make a show that can be silly and have laughter and create space for that — people need to feel like they have agency. Feel like they’re a part of something. That was a good lesson; the more you relax and trust that people are incredible in all different ways, you don’t need to stress so much. 

Pederson: Something that this process of being in Montreal and Toronto offered post or within COVID is to remember to be real. Originally, our beginning piece with our musician was original hype-man stuff and because of some feedback we’d gotten, we talked and realized, “oh yeah, to ask someone how they are right now it’s not as flippant or as passing as it used to be.” Now to ask someone how they’re doing, we’re actually asking because most of us have a really complicated answer. There is an air of feeling more genuine with one another.

Are there any final words you would like to add?

Pederson: I would say that this show has a spirit of care. That’s something I would like to mention about it.