to do pantomime. Prehistoric men would do pantomime to try to influence nature to let them get a kill while hunting. Before language, prehistoric men told about a hunt with pantomime. Prehistoric men would use pantomime to tell the history of the tribe. A clown named Grock became a very successful mime. He started as an acrobatic clown at a very young age. Grock became famous because he succeeded in the circus and in the music hall. After years of successfully performing in circuses, he tried his clown routine in a theater in Berlin. Grock began to move away from broad comedy in the Grimaldi tradition, and towards Debureu’s type of performance. In his first performance in a theater, the audience did not respond. Grock realized that the type of performance required for the theater is different than that required by the circus. Grock began to use a clown as a pantomime character whose actions comment on life. Grock went on to become one of the greatest performers of the variety stage. Grock used music to portray man’s struggle with fate, just like Beethoven, but in a different way. Before Grock would play violin, he would throw the bow up in the air and try to catch it, but miss. Then he would retreat behind a screen to practice and the audience could see the bow flying above the screen. He returned to face the audience and missed again. He became so flustered that he threw the bow in the air and caught it without even knowing it! When Grock sat down on the piano bench to play piano and found that it was too far from the piano, he would struggle to push the piano closer to the bench! Like all good comedy, this reflected man’s struggle to tame nature. The circus was saved from too much clown tradition in the 1940’s by a man named Emmett Kelly. The costumes were getting too elaborate. The usual clown costume descended from the vari-colored costume of the Roman mimes. Originally, it was intended to symbolize rags, li...
