Montenaro & Marclau?

Well, as many of us mimes and touring artists know, the press is always getting things wrong. As a creator, one of my motivations behind becoming a publisher was the desire to tell my own stories, report my own news and print accurate information. As many mimes and touring artists know, press and media can distort what we do. Often articles or video broadcasts are derived from stories producers have dreamed up for their subscribers. It’s not just the press, even arts institutions rewrite things to suit their own needs that are misleading either intentionally or just through being sloppy or lazy.

We were recently researching the person who got Tony interested in mime in the first place, Professor Louise Gifford at Columbia University. A search under her name turned up this obscure press release from Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts which wouldn’t come up in searches through Montanaro as Tony’s last name is incorrectly spelled along with a goof on Marcel Marceau’s last name as “Marclau”! The article was published in 1969 and describes two years of teaching and directing as an artist in residence at Towson State College in Baltimore. There were also two other films produced by the Center for Mass Communication of Columbia University in addition to “The Mime” titled “Sketches” and “Illusions”. Hopefully, we’ll be able to make these available in the future on MIME SPOKEN HERE. I have added this article to Tony’s scrapbook page.

-Michael