When we visit the members of Tennine at their warm and welcoming practise studio, the actors and comedians of this ‘cinemime’ group are busy rehearsing for a wedding performance the following day. Although their craft – recreating iconic movie scenes by pantomiming – remains one of the more niche performing arts, that break into the mainstream could be just around the corner.
Cinemime (cinema and mime, as you might have guessed) is one of the training methods used by the great French acting instructor Jacques Lecoq, who taught the likes of Geoffrey Rush and Sacha Baron Cohen. Originally intended as a solo exercise, cinemime was turned into a group activity by Makoto Sekine, Tennine’s frontman, who initially hoped it would help promote his acting career.
But Sekine fell in love with the wordless world and is now a full-time cinemime. His group’s repertoire includes up to 40 acts, including scenes from Star Wars, E.T. and Studio Ghibli’s greatest hits, in addition to takes on more obscure flicks like Japanese horror movie The Ring and Indian comedy 3 Idiots. Adjusting their show to match the audience, Tennine treated us to their very recognisable interpretations of Ghibli classics Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Kiki’s Delivery Service.
The performers are divided into actors and a narrator – similar to a silent film – with the narrator in charge of setting the scene and making verbal jabs at the actors for extra comedic effect. When asked about how the skits are made understandable, Sekiya explained how ‘many people have watched each Ghibli movie more than ten times. So if you act out a scene, they’ll generally know it. With scenes that aren’t as recognisable, we try to appeal to common perceptions – for example, people know how Jackie Chan movies usually go, so they can enjoy our portrayals even without being able to name the specific film.’
So, what’s next for Sekiya and Tennine? ‘We’d like to tour Europe in about two years. We would love to be invited to the Japan Expo, so we’re working towards getting as many people as possible to hear about us and watch our cinemimes. Since our goal is to perform overseas, we’re thinking about incorporating subtitles into our performances as well.’
Tennine perform three or four times a month in front of the Waseda Shochiku cinema, and once a month at Uchoten Sakaba (1-23-4 Yanagibashi, Taito-ku) in Asakusabashi.