Marcel Marceau was a French actor and mime artist most famous for his stage persona, "Bip the Clown". He referred to mime as the "art of silence" and he performed professionally worldwide for over 60 years. As a Jewish youth, he lived in hiding and worked with the French Resistance during most of World War II, giving his first major performance to 3,000 troops after the liberation of Paris in August 1944. Following the war, he studied dramatic art and mime in Paris.
John Michael Turturro is an American actor, director, producer and writer. He is known for his contributions to the independent film movement. He has appeared in over sixty feature films and has worked frequently with the Coen brothers, Adam Sandler, and Spike Lee. He began his acting career on-screen in the early 1980s, and received early critical recognition with the independent film Five Corners (1987). Turturro's mainstream breakthrough came with Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989) and the Coens' Miller's Crossing (1990) and Barton Fink (1991), for which he won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival. His subsequent roles included Herb Stempel in Quiz Show (1994), Jesus Quintana in both The Big Lebowski (1998) and The Jesus Rolls (2020), Pete in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), Seymour Simmons in the Transformers film series and Carmine Falcone in The Batman. In 2016, in a lead role, he portrayed a lawyer in the HBO miniseries The Night Of. He had a recurring role in the miniseries The Plot Against America in 2020. He currently stars as Irving on the Apple TV+ series Severance.
Robert Francis "Bobcat" Goldthwait is an American actor, comedian, director and screenwriter, known for his acerbic black comedy stand-up act, delivered through an energetic stage persona with an unusual raspy and high-pitched voice. He came to prominence with his stand-up specials An Evening with Bobcat Goldthwait—Share the Warmth and Bob Goldthwait—Is He Like That All the Time? and his acting roles, including Zed in the Police Academy franchise. Since 2012, he has been a regular panelist on the radio-quiz show, Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!.
Physical theatre is a genre of theatrical performance that encompasses storytelling primarily through physical movement. Although several performance theatre disciplines are often described as "physical theatre," the genre's characteristic aspect is a reliance on the performers' physical motion rather than, or combined with, text to convey storytelling. Performers can communicate through various body gestures.
William Mills Irwin is an American actor, clown, and comedian. He began as a vaudeville-style stage performer and has been noted for his contribution to the renaissance of American circus during the 1970s. He has made a number of appearances on film and television, and he won a Tony Award for his role in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on Broadway. He is also known as Mr. Noodle on the Sesame Street segment Elmo's World, has appeared in the Sesame Street film short Does Air Move Things?, regularly appeared as a therapist on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and had a recurring role as "The Dick & Jane Killer" on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. From 2017 to 2019, he appeared as Cary Loudermilk on the FX television series Legion.
Jacques Lecoq, was a French stage actor and acting movement coach. He was best known for his teaching methods in physical theatre, movement, and mime which he taught at the school he founded in Paris known as École internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq. He taught there from 1956 until his death from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1999.
École internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq is a school of physical theatre located on Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis in the 10th arrondissement of Paris.
Shakes the Clown is a 1991 American black comedy film directed and written by Bobcat Goldthwait, who performs the title role. It also features Julie Brown, Blake Clark, Paul Dooley, Kathy Griffin, Florence Henderson, Tom Kenny, Adam Sandler, Scott Herriott, LaWanda Page, Jack Gallagher, and a cameo by Robin Williams as Mime Jerry using the pseudonym "Marty Fromage".
Wolfe Bowart is a physical comedian, actor, director and playwright. He is the creator and performer of the physical theatre productions LaLaLuna, Letter's End and The Man the Sea Saw. Bowart is the son of writer Walter Bowart and Linda Dugmore, and grandson of the abstract expressionist artist Edward Dugmore.
Selton Figueiredo Mello is a Brazilian actor and director. Since his childhood, he acted on TV shows. Now he works on TV, movies and theater. Throughout his career, he developed a strong and solid experience in cinema, producing and directing movies and videoclips, and being publicly and critically acclaimed for it. The actor hosted Tarja Preta, a TV show about culture and independent movies, from 2004 until 2008.
Vyacheslav Ivanovich “Slava” Polunin PAR is a Russian performance artist and clown. He is the creator of the stage spectacles Asisyai-revue, Slava's Snowshow and Diabolo.
Paul Franklin Dano is an American actor. He began his career on Broadway before making his film debut in The Newcomers (2000). He won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance for his role in L.I.E. (2001) and received accolades for his role as Dwayne Hoover in Little Miss Sunshine (2006). For his dual roles as Paul and Eli Sunday in Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (2007), he was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Bill Bowers is an American mime artist and actor based in New York City. As an actor, mime and educator, Bill has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. He is a Movement for Actors Instructor at NYU Tisch School for the Arts and also teaches at the William Esper Studio and the Stella Adler Studio in NYC.
Christopher Cantwell Fitzgerald is an American actor and singer. He is known for his role as Boq in the musical Wicked and his role of Igor in Young Frankenstein, for which he earned Outer Critics Circle Award, Drama Desk Award, and Tony Award nominations. He also starred as Ogie Anhorn in the Broadway production of Waitress, with songs composed by Sara Bareilles.
George Coates is an American theater director most notable for his work with George Coates Performance Works (GCPW), which he founded in 1977 in San Francisco, CA. The company produced over 20 multi-media live performances over a span of 25 years, winning a multitude of awards for its international performances, earning critical acclaim in Asia, Europe and South America and gaining North American attention at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival. In the 1990s, he was the first to merge live performers within stage environments created by computer generated graphics in real time live theater. Coates became known as a pioneer of experimental live theater using stereographic projections and 3-D glasses populated by live actors and musicians.
Matthew D. Walker is an American film and television actor and television director.
James Spencer Henry Edmond Marcel Thierrée is a Swiss circus performer, violinist, actor and director who is best known for his theatre performances which blend contemporary circus, mime, dance, and music. He is the son of circus performers Victoria Chaplin and Jean-Baptiste Thierrée, the grandson of filmmaker Charlie Chaplin and the great-grandson of playwright Eugene O'Neill.
David Dimitri is an internationally acclaimed tightrope acrobat who has been praised for his unique style.
Daniel Warr, also known as Mon Oncle le bossu or DADO, is a Canadian street performer, magician and clown. He was born in Montreal, Quebec, and raised in Edmonton, Alberta.
Cyron Bjørn Melville is a Danish actor and musician.
