Tim Dry
Way back in late summer 1976 on a whim (or an instinct) I quit my job as a Graphic Designer in my hometown and overnight moved into Central London to study mime. I’d seen an advert in Time Out that advertised weekly classes at the Dance Centre in Covent Garden. I went along one Tuesday evening and Desmond Jones was the teacher and he very kindly allowed me to watch the class unobtrusively from the back of the room. I was instantly smitten by the magic of this little known art form. Next week I was good to go with black tights and t-shirt and ballet pumps! I soon became obsessed with what I was learning and bit by bit what I was taught changed my life. Desmond was the most wonderful teacher. He was intuitive, imparted the skills of corporeal mime and physical theatre with good grace to beginners and seasoned regulars alike. He was always encouraging and above all charming.
He brought so much to me that, after a few weeks of one night only a week classes, I and a handful of others asked him if we could meet up and do more away from the one hour we got in Covent Garden. He agreed and eight of us gathered together with Des at the weekends in an empty theatre in Fitzrovia to practice, practice, practice. Before long we’d become a mime company and we christened ourselves ‘Silents’.
For the first time in my life I willingly and whole-heartedly devoted myself to a teacher and it was a wonderful experience to be part of a well-oiled collective of like-minded people. Our first performance as Silents took place at Battersea Arts Centre in 1977 with an ensemble piece mainly devised by Des that we christened ‘Visions Of Hell And Other Stories’. That opening night in the dressing room before the show applying my Max Factor white pancake face make up was a thrill like I’d never known before. Propped up against the mirror was a postcard of a majestic and wild feline and on the back was written ‘Tiger Tim, all I want is excellence. Des x’. I did my best to justify his faith in me. It worked! The show was a success.
To say that my work with Desmond enhanced my life for the better is certainly no exaggeration. From his teachings and their application my career shifted into a realm I’d only ever previously imagined. The crowning moment was being invited by Des in January 1982 to audition amongst other mimes at his school for a role as an alien creature in ’Return Of The Jedi’, the third instalment of the Star Wars saga. A week later he called me and told me that I’d got the job. I was off and running!
Thank you for everything Des. I love you.
Tim Dry
Tim Dry is a published writer, occasional actor, an exhibited photographic artist, a once upon a time mime and sometimes a musician with singles and albums to his credit since 1981. More info on his website www.timdry.co.uk
Peta Lily
About Desmond
An accidental meeting with an acquaintance brought me to The World’s End in 1979. ‘You have to go to Desmond Jones’ classes’. Modern church hall, lino floor.
I found it like ballet class in the way it demanded mental and physical focus. Riding a non-existent bicycle challenged balance, agility, dynamic control. It required simultaneous crystallisation and flow in isolated sections of the body (even the focal length of the eyes had their separate work to do). My first experience was a weekend course, after which I could hardly walk.
Weekly evening classes – each night we learned technique and were commanded to construct a piece using it. No matter how spare and specific the technique learned had been, we had to find an imaginative use for it: Shall it be literal or abstract? If we are playing church bells, how can we make the audience ‘hear’ the sound? Showing in front of the group was where execution met representation. Was it clear or clumsy? Was it comprehensible?
Desmond cared deeply that mime appeared vigorous and muscular. He held up a slim paperback: ‘Physical Fitness by the Royal Canadian Air Force’. Inspired, I worked through all the levels.
Des modelled dedication. If the hall was cold, he’d remove his tee-shirt (this was also to honour the methodology of Etienne Decroux, stripping back to show the full articulation of the human form). Des questioned the pieces in the LIMF programme saying; ‘But is it Mime?’ He seemed wary of mixing in dance technique – full credit to him for being a clear stand for the form.
Des had a boyish sense of humour. One evening we were asked to create our piece without speaking to discuss ideas. Having boiled the old-school metal urns and laid out the biscuits, he came into the centre of the room, feet in first position and arms outstretched to wordlessly announce: ‘T’ time! Leg work was always accompanied by the joke: ‘Out to lunge, back in ten minutes.’
Desmond quoted Decroux: a mime is ‘an actor with the body of an athlete and the heart of a poet’. I was hooked by this powerful mix of technicality, discipline and the ability to express and create. When he opened the Desmond Jones School of Mime in 1979 (at the British Theatre Institute on Fitzroy Square) I enrolled in the very first year. I walked to school each morning along the Marylebone Road doing Decrouxian hand exercises: palette, trident, coquille, salamander, marguerite; repeat.
Through Desmond’s classes I met the artist Tessa Schneideman, a painter who’d exhibited at the Royal Academy and the ICA with strong and slightly surreal figurative pieces on large canvases. An exceptional artist, she changed direction and came to mime because painting was ‘too solitary’. We teamed up with Claudia Prietzel, who had trained as a puppeteer, and we formed our own touring company, Three Women Mime.
Desmond contributed so much to so many. It’s true – teachers can change your life.
Peta Lily
Peta Lily is a London-based performer/theatremaker and one of the groundbreaking performers involved in shaping the Physical Theatre work of the 1980s. She is well known for her one-woman shows, physical theatre productions and open workshops in Clown, Dark Clown, and Theatre Skills.
Gavin Robertson and Andrew Dawson
Desmond Jones
‘I weigh, therefore I am.’
(Etienne Decroux)
In the autumn of 1981, I spent 3 months studying with Desmond Jones. I had already studied at the London Mime Centre (with Adam Darius) and Moni Yakim in New York. But of all those courses, it’s the work with Desmond that has stayed with me the most for the past 43 years. The course ran for 3 months in the mornings. We shared that hall with the local dog club – not a room you would want to lie down in unless you wanted to be covered in dog hair! There was a little kitchen with tea costing 19p, and a notice board where Desmond would put the quote of the day.
‘Mime is the ability to say no matter what by exclusive use of the body’
(Etienne Decroux)
‘Gestures are words’
(Lindsey Kemp)
‘No, they are not’
(Desmond Jones)
At the time, I was obsessed with the technique of Etienne Decroux; I loved the movement and articulations in the body. ‘Triple designs’, ‘Translation’, ‘Inclination’, and ‘Rotation’. These movements are still relevant to me and have parallels within the Feldenkrais method. There is a deep understanding of subtle movements I can make now that have a legacy back in that hall in Shepherd’s Bush with Desmond.
I recently discovered my old notebook from my time with Desmond. Flicking through the pages, I was amazed at how many exercises and ideas I still think about today. I look at the hand movements to make the illusion of the classic glass wall and I would still teach it the same way today.
Desmond was not a man with a big ego, but he did have a big heart, light and generous and always encouraging. I was challenged but never threatened. I would hope that young, inspiring performers can still have the chance to study with someone like Desmond Jones. He not only taught classic mime technique, he also embraced new thoughts and ideas, his work constantly evolving. His teaching has a long reach into the many performers he taught over the years.
Andrew
When we opened ‘Thunderbirds F.A.B.’ in the West End back in 1989, Desmond sent a note to say how proud he was, which meant a lot. Two very Desmond sayings that have kept me/us company over the years are ‘respect your illusion’ and ‘easy to say, harder to do’ – both of which I’ve repeated often when taking a corporeal mime class not only in the UK, but in Australia, America and as far flung as Taiwan or Hong Kong.
They say you never forget a good teacher, and that’s certainly true of Desmond. Indirectly, through various pupils, he’s ‘appeared’ all over the world in various shows and productions.
If ‘legacy’ is where influence and time meet, he’s still physically present, though now incorporeal himself. Quite an accomplishment!
Gavin
Andrew Dawson has worked in theatre for the past 45 years, creating ‘Thunderbirds F.A.B.’ with Gavin Robertson in the 1980s and then, alongside directing and making his solo pieces, worked as a movement director at the MET New York and the ENO. He is also a trained Feldenkrais practitioner and Hatha Yoga Teacher.
Gavin Robertson comes from a physical theatre background (Lecoq, Kemp and Gaulier), producing, creating, directing, and performing his own work for national and international touring. He is currently on tour with his new work ‘Is that a Whip on Your Hand’.
Joseph Seelig
‘Mime is a dangerous sport and few who enter the arena emerge unscathed. Self-indulgence is rife.’
(Desmond Jones)
Two years in Paris studying with the uncompromising Etienne Decroux, ‘father of modern mime’, shaped Desmond’s artistic beliefs and career. Returning to the UK he taught what he had learned from Decroux, at RADA and various other colleges, lectured widely and gave performances where the few opportunities allowed including at the then new National Theatre.
He attended every performance at the first Cockpit Festival of Mime and Visual Theatre in 1977 (precursor to the London International Mime Festival) in which he himself took part, and sent me a report that he had written for the Association of International Mimes and Pantomimists of which he was UK representative.
He didn’t much approve of the festival’s ‘visual theatre’ element, and commented that whilst there had been some mime there had been very little of the art of mime. But he had seen full houses and enthusiastic audiences every night, and correctly as it turned out, perceived the need and opportunity for a professional mime school in London.
Desmond was also an insightful thinker and writer about mime. His critique of that first festival and its participants took no prisoners, but was thoughtful, constructive and never unkind. In the original prospectus for his School of Mime, first based at the British Theatre Association in London’s Fitzroy Square, he wrote ‘there is an increasing confusion among performers and public alike as to what constitutes mime’. There was absolutely no confusion in Desmond’s mind – mime was pure movement, reflecting thought and states of being through controlled movement of the body, without the ‘limitations’ of props, moving to music, exaggerated gesture and all the rest of it. He said the training was no less rigorous than for ballet, it just started later. ‘When you have a body that responds to all your demands, then you have real freedom – the freedom to express whatever you wish. True liberty is the luxury of self-discipline. Beyond technique there must be humanity and imagination; otherwise there is no art. The art of mime is what I teach’.
Prior to Desmond’s initiative there had been no intensive course. His school was a success from the outset and many performers and others who made careers in performance, having benefited from learning the art of mime and utilising some part of its discipline, owe him a great deal. Gradually Desmond came to accept the validity of what has come to be known as visual theatre, or physical theatre, but without ever compromising his belief that the art of mime was a perfect form of expression requiring no assistance to convey meaning, emotion and magic.
Joseph Seelig
Joseph Seelig OBE was co-founder (with Nola Rae) and director (with Helen Lannaghan) of London International Mime Festival until its final edition in 2023. Formerly also a director of both the Hong Kong Arts Festival and New Zealand International Arts Festival, his company, Hetherington Seelig was for many years involved in arts and artist management, international touring and consultancy, West End production, and was the UK’s second largest regional theatre operator.
David Glass
I first met Desmond Jones in 1978 during a Tarzan film audition, where I was deemed ‘too tall’ to play an ape. We crossed paths again in 1980 at Jacques Lecoq’s international summer school in Glasgow, where I also met my first wife, Peta Lily. Desmond, having trained with Étienne Decroux, was encountering Lecoq’s work for the first time. His eloquence – both in speech and movement – was extraordinary, and as a young artist, I was inspired to see such expressive physicality in English theatre.
Desmond was integral to the evolution of mime and physical theatre and, though we did not always see eye to eye, as part of the early Mime Action Group, alongside Penny May, Joseph Seelig, and others, he helped push for recognition and funding for the art form. This led to a significant shift when the Arts Council transitioned mime from dance to theatre, enabling companies like Complicité and my own company to flourish.
Desmond’s influence extended far and wide, shaping countless practitioners of mime and physical theatre. Even those who hadn’t trained directly under him felt the ripples of his impact. His presence, always thoughtful and articulate, was a thread weaving together the fabric of our field. His legacy is vast, and his loss leaves a profound absence.
David Glass has performed, directed and taught in over seventy countries. He trained at the Lecoq School in Paris, and has also studied with Augusto Boal, Grotowski, Peter Brook, Alvin Ailey and Mike Alfreds. He is an award-winning solo performer, theatre director, writer, designer, lighting designer, filmmaker, teacher and creative thinker. He is Artistic Director the David Glass Ensemble, which this year celebrates its 45th year.
