I just realized that all the arguments and bruhaha about Secrets being exposed in Magic misses the point...

Illusion and suspension of disbelief is about how you pull the Audience in... It's NOT gotten by keeping them at a distance with "secrets".

Everything in Mime is out in the open but the Illusion and suspension of disbelief is incredible (when the Mime is good of course...)

Mimes are the real Illusionist in my book.

When I first started in magic, I did an act called Mime over Matter. I was more comfortable sharing silently. Of course there was a lot of internal dialogue going on inside of my head. My early heroes included Red Skelton and Marcel Marceu. The words came much later. Early on I put on "Green Face", when doing a Zucchini Festival.(in the early 80's years before the Blue Group) Mime can be used even in a talking group in the "double take", "raised eyebrow" or body controlled muscle pass with a coin.

As inferred above there are as many bad mimes as there are "bad magicians". ...and as "they say", one needs to have a place to be bad, before one can get good/better.

silently but sincerely

Harris

As my teacher used to say, "Magicians make the visible invisible, but mimes make the invisible visible."