PARIS PERFORMER: Straight to the Strip

Mime brings his act from Paris to Las Vegas

When asked how he keeps people laughing, Marc Lemberger had absolutely nothing to say.

Lemberger is a street mime at Paris Las Vegas. His job isn't to be confused with that of a traditional mime. While traditional mimes feel their way around an invisible box, Lemberger must think and act outside it.

Raised in Paris, France, Lemberger's first exposure to the art of street miming occurred when he was about 3 years old. He recalls a crowd surrounding a mime he saw entertaining people and wanted to make people laugh at him the way they laughed at the mime.

"I saw a large group of people around him," he said. "I was just a little boy, so at the time I didn't understand why it was so funny to watch him walk behind people and mimic their walk. But people were hysterically laughing. A few weeks later, after I watched him all the time, he wasn't there anymore, so I took over."

Lemberger admits to fumbling his act a little as he learned how to mime. Before he realized that they had special makeup, Lemberger applied white paint to his face and had a terrible time trying to remove it. He also eventually discovered the key to captivating an audience is to have a big one.

"You have to find a good spot," he said. "When I used to do it in New York, people would fight over a location."

Before turning back to his roots of authentic Parisian street miming, Lemberger managed to spawn an entire dance movement in the 1980s. As one of the original people to start break-dancing, Lemberger appeared in several films and dance documentaries that followed the style of dance. He said people he used to dance with are now paid $1,000 per hour or more to teach the skill to other people. The reason he didn't pursue it professionally was at the time there was little money in it.

"When I moved to New York I wanted to street dance," he said. "I wanted to be in that circle and battle people. That's what it was about for me. After I realized there wasn't any money in it and I still had rent to pay, I started to go back to the origins of street performing. The neat thing about it is that I can do it anywhere."

So, Lemberger donned a feather, his signature item, and picked a street corner. Several years later, he was offered the chance to work professionally for a set of hotels and eventually landed a job at Paris Las Vegas, where he works half an hour on, half an hour off for eight hours a day, five days a week.

There are no schools for his type of miming and no stylebook to follow, yet Lemberger continues to make a crowd nearly double over with a tickle of his feather and his mockery of an oblivious person's stride. Being a performer in a hotel is also a lot easier than patrolling the pavement.

"There is no schooling for it," he said. "It's strictly on-the-job training. You just have to find as many things as you can to make people laugh. I figured these things out as I went along.

"Not just anyone can do this. There's costuming and reaction that must be used, whatever it takes to get them to laugh. It's ridiculous, but it's right on point. There's no pressure at a hotel, either. The people are here to laugh, and I know I'm going to make that happen."


<<--[back]