Mime

Richmond Shepard started America’s first ensemble Mime troupe, He was mostly influenced by Jean Louis Barrault in the film “Children of Paradise” (“Les Enfants du Paradis”).

Richmond was trained by Alvin Epstein and Etienne Decroux, and has performed on over 100 television shows as a Mime. Hewas move-ment coordinator on several features and many industrial films.

He and his Los Angeles troupe did Mime shows which he wrote, directed and starred in at The Mark Taper Forum, The Westwood Playhouse, The Wilshire Ebel Theatre and The Variety Arts Theatre. They toured the U.S. playing at colleges and theatres and later at The Edinburgh Festival. Recently he has performed Mime shows or “Standup Mime” in New York, Jakarta and Bali in Indonesia, Berlin, Derry, Ireland (2004 - 2008) and Los Angeles. He taught Mime at Cal State L.A., U.S.C. and other colleges, and currently teaches in New York. His “Mime: The Technique of Silence” is the standard text in universities throughout the U.S. and the U.K.

2009- peformances in Shanghai
2010- performance and workshop in Armenia

The book “Pantomime: The Silent Theatre” by Hunt (Atheneum) called him “America’s Foremost Mime.”