The London International Mime Festival (LIMF) is an annual

theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...

event in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

. Its directors, Joseph Seelig and Helen Lannaghan, are winners of the

International Theatre Institute The International Theatre Institute ITI is the world’s largest performing arts organisation, founded in 1948 by theatre and dance experts and UNESCO. It has hosted various events through its history, including the Theatre of Nations, an intern ...

Award for Excellence. LIMF features

live art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

, a

new circus Contemporary circus (also known as new circus, and ''nouveau cirque'' and ''cirque contemporain'' in French-speaking countries) is a genre of performing arts developed in the late 20th century in which a story or theme is conveyed through tradit ...

clown A clown is a person who performs comedy and arts in a state of open-mindedness using physical comedy, typically while wearing distinct makeup or costuming and reversing folkway-norms. History The most ancient clowns have been found in ...

, object, and

physical theatre 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 aspe ...

at various central London venues. It was established in 1977 as a one-off event at the

Cockpit Theatre The Cockpit was a theatre in London, operating from 1616 to around 1665. It was the first theatre to be located near Drury Lane. After damage in 1617, it was named The Phoenix. History The original building was an actual cockpit; that is, a st ...

, by the theatre's manager Joseph Seelig and Australian mime artist

Nola Rae Nola Rae Order of the British Empire, MBE (born 1950) is a mime artist. Biography Early life and education Rae was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1949 and migrated to London with her family in 1963. Originally hoping to become a dancer, at 16 sh ...

. The festival is the longest-running event of its kind in the world.

Critical reception

"The aesthetic outlook of the London International Mime Festival, founded in 1977, remains evergreen, varied, and vital. The works of physical/visual theatre programmed by its astute co-directors enliven the typically bone-chilling post-holiday doldrums." — Donald Hutera, The Times. “LIMF now functions as a very high-level international festival of dance, circus, and puppet theatre. The shows have been carefully selected and curated, so whatever you see is likely to be, at the very least, inventive and interesting.''” —'' Andrew Haydon, The Guardian.

Awards

The festival’s productions and its two directors have received three

Olivier Award The Laurence Olivier Awards, or simply the Olivier Awards, are presented annually by the Society of London Theatre to recognise excellence in professional theatre in London at an annual ceremony in the capital. The awards were originally known as ...

nominations, the

Total Theatre Total may refer to: Mathematics * Total, the summation of a set of numbers * Total order, a partial order without incomparable pairs * Total relation, which may also mean ** connected relation (a binary relation in which any two elements are compa ...

lifetime achievement award in 2012, and the 2017 Empty Space Peter Brook Award for Special Achievement.

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://www.mimelondon.com
2003 interview with Joseph Seelig in the Independent newspaper
Theatre festivals in England Festivals in London Circus festivals