A short life of the author
Annette Lust is an American theatre scholar, performer, and educator who has written extensively on mime, physical theatre, and the commedia dell’arte tradition.
Her major work, From the Greek Mimes to Marcel Marceau and Beyond: Mimes, Actors, Pierrots and Clowns — A Chronicle of the Many Visages of Mime in the Theatre (2003, Scarecrow Press), traces the history of mime and physical performance from ancient Greece through the Roman pantomime, the Italian commedia dell’arte, the French Pierrots, the great nineteenth-century mimes, and up to Marcel Marceau and contemporary physical theatre.
Lust’s work fills an important gap in theatre history by treating mime as a serious art form with a continuous tradition spanning more than two millennia, rather than as a novelty entertainment.
Collecting Lust
Lust’s From the Greek Mimes to Marcel Marceau and Beyond (Scarecrow Press, 2003) is an academic reference collected by scholars of theatre history and performing arts. It remains the most comprehensive English-language history of mime as a performance tradition.