As the 20th International Mime Festival opens in London, performers from across Europe and Australia explore the limits of the medium in the biggest event of its kind.

Mime traditionally means acting without words. The mime artists hope that by restricting language, they can transcend it, perhaps communicating a truth that goes beyond words.

Circus techniques like acrobatics are combined in mime

But in recent years mime has resorted to all possible visual theatre forms, and does not rule out the spoken word.

In the 1998 Mime Festival the performers combine theatre with dance, clowning, circus, puppetry, sculpture and also words.

The origins of mime

But mime began as verbal theatre thousands of years ago in ancient Greece. It was a form of comic folk play, often highly satirical and earthily obscene.

The tradition of silent mime sprang from the fairgrounds and minor theatres of 18th century France, when licensing laws forbade all theatre except the Comédie Francaise from staging spoken plays in Paris.

Mimic acts were developed as a defiant reaction to the regulation. It was a way of poking fun at authority.

Since then the circus took visual theatre to new levels, becoming ever bigger and glitzier in the 20th century. But as the circus took off, the clown changed from being a vehicle for voicing enigmatic truths to a simple buffoon, provoking laughter by slap-stick routines.

The dark side of clowning

The modern theatre clown wants "to return to the poetry that was lost in the circus", said the great Russian clown Slava Polunin.

Marcel Marceau popularised mime in the 1950s

Although Marcel Marceau is best known for painting his face white and story-telling through gestures, he was also fascinated with death.

At the London Mime Festival Mr Polunin's pupil and colleague, Anton Adassinsky, explores the dark and sinister side of clowning in The Red Zone, winner of the Total Theatre Award at last year's Edinburgh fringe festival.

The Red Zone is a very sad show, says Mr Adassinksy. The artists explore their own inner feelings, and let them all flow out during the performance.

But he still holds on to humour.

"Laughter is the last rope that which is connecting people on this planet. If it breaks - if you stop the laughing - this will be the apocalypse," he said in a recent newspaper interview.

In a performance by Peepolykus, the clowns argue that if mime means using the body, then it means using the voice too.

David Sant: "Mime is not only about being silent"

"Mime is not only about being silent. Sometimes it need the word. If if doesn't, you can do a show without words. If it needs a word, it's better to put it there," said David Sant.

Another radical performance comes from Spain: La Ribot acts out a series of short surreal snapshots that are sometimes over before you have time to blink.

"It's at times like looking at a series of modern paintings, and at times like looking into your own brain," said Joseph Seelig, co-director of the festival.

The 20 companies represented at this year's festival are predominantly from Europe. Mr Seelig says this is because Europe is traditionally the place where theatre come from.

However, Britain's theatrical tradition is strongly language-based. The London Mime festival is the one place where two weeks of performance celebrate visual theatre first and foremost.

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