Mime Wars
Mimes may not speak, but Aspenites certainly do.
Aspenites, particularly the provocateurs writing the columns and letters in the local newspapers, will seemingly squabble about anything. Nevertheless, the root of a recent newspaper spat was unusual even for Aspen. At issue: Mimes.
The back-story: In an effort to liven up Aspen’s pedestrian malls, the Commercial Core and Lodging Commission hatched the idea of enlisting entertainers in the form of Aspen Music School students, local bands and child-friendly talent such as jugglers, clowns, sword swallowers and those white-faced, white-gloved, look-at-me-I’m-in-a-box-but-can’t-speak-and-no-nothing-you-say-or-do-is-going-to-get-me-out-of-your-face performers who’ve been around since 467 B.C.
Aspen Times columnist Su Lum went first. Writing of having once declined an invitation to see Marcel Marceau: “I would rather be skinned alive, chopped to little pieces and ground up in the garbage disposal than to sit in a cramped theater for two hours watching Marcel Marceau.”
Andrew Kole, an Aspen rabble-rouser, perennial political candidate, member of the CCLC and a man decidedly unmimelike in his loquaciousness, took offense in a letter to the editor: “Personally, I thought a mime was less threatening to a little kid than a guy sticking a 3-foot blade down his throat.” He then stated he would take Marcel Marceau off his Christmas list for dead people.
It didn’t end there. Times columnist Roger Marolt expressed a skepticism that went beyond the mimes: “After we rent the elephants [Marolt’s idea] and sign the contract with the sword swallower, our town is going to be as much fun as a suburban birthday party for a 4-year-old.” In a letter the next day, Kole seemed puzzled, almost hurt. Marolt wrote back, via Lee Anne Marlets, one of his noms de plume, and appeared to plea for harmony: “Come together on this, people. Free the jesters!”
And so Aspen has, to surprising success, Wednesdays through Saturdays on the pedestrian malls, through summer and possibly fall, from 5 to 8 p.m.
