Chapter 1: What is the significance of silence in expression?
You know, no one will be shocked to learn that I love fantasy. I love how modern fantasy reimagines history, like George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones. It was loosely, very loosely modeled on the English War of the Roses, which was cool. And the one thing that carried over from the history to the fantasy is the part of the fool. The gesture, the clown, the joker.
In Game of Thrones, the closest we get to this ancient role is Tyrion Lannister. No, officially, he's no jester. He's a lord. A Lannister.
Chapter 2: How did Gregory use mime as a form of protest?
Hand of the king, but look at him. Drunk. The one everyone underestimates. The only one with the freedom to say the quiet part out loud. He'll only get a goblet of wine in the face for his trouble. The only one licensed to tell the truth. Because if anyone else says to the king, your war is failing... The peasants can't afford eggs. Your queen is sleeping with the bodyguard.
Well, then it's off with your head. Kill the messenger. The one person who can say what's actually happening has to be the Joker. Because he's just playing, right? Just having fun. He can say whatever he wants until he can't. then it's off with his head too. And today on Snap Judgment, bad news because our joker stumbles across the line and he does it without saying one word.
Snap Judgment proudly presents Silence Speaks. My name is Glenn Washington. Silence is a virtue, but I don't have.
Chapter 3: What was Gregory's first performance experience like?
When you're listening, a snap judgment now this should not be but a lot of people in the u.s are familiar with this story right black van with black windows coming from the street area
into courtyard. They take this person from building.
That's Gregory telling Snap producer John Fasile about how authorities dragged his neighbor away in the middle of the night.
They brought him into his van, their van, and they disappeared. That's it. Was it a man?
Man, yes, man. Was he screaming?
Was he... No, no, silent. No. Silent. Never can forget that. That was 1951 about. 1951, 1952. That was Stalin. Stalin.
Since he left the Soviet Union five decades ago, Gregory Gurievich has lived in the same little apartment in Jersey City, just across the river from NYC. Is this all your artwork?
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Chapter 4: How did Marcel Marceau influence Gregory's mime career?
Yes. Except this one. What's this one? The walls are just completely covered in paintings. There's mounted sculptures. And these masks are yours too? Yes. Wow, the feathers. He brought me upstairs, equally decked out. And in this little closet, there was a suitcase.
Yeah, I came with this briefcase from Soviet Union.
Can we look? I can take it out for you.
Wow, you're a brave person.
It was full of documents.
Door certificate, all this stuff.
Photographs.
This is my childhood. Siberia. Childhood.
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Chapter 5: What challenges did Gregory face during the Soviet era?
Childhood in Siberia. Yes, exactly. And buried in the pile, Gregory pulls out a glossy black and white photo of a young man wearing white clown makeup.
That's me.
I gotta take a picture of this. Gregory was, is a mime. And here in America, mimes are kind of a joke, right? Like, maybe you're picturing, you know, someone standing on a street corner, pulling an invisible rope, trapped behind an invisible wall, performing for tips.
But in the Soviet Union in the 1960s, when talk was perilous and everyone was listening... In Russia, you say, between three of us, one can be a betrayer. Mime was a way to speak up without saying a word.
So mimes criticized government by using silent performance. So it was only a form of criticism which was permitted because it was no proof that they did it because they were silent.
So your first performance, how big was the crowd?
So it was about 20, no, not about 20, about 50 people, sick people, people who are attached to the bed, but they can maybe stand up and can walk, can wash themselves, can go to bathroom possibly.
Gregory gave his first mime performance somewhere around 1962 when he was in his early 20s for patients at a hospital in Leningrad. And how did they react to your performance?
It was fantastic. Audience received me so well. It's just unbelievable. It gave me energy.
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Chapter 6: How did Gregory's work evolve after leaving the Soviet Union?
It gave me energy to continue.
Gregory had rehearsed obsessively in his mother's apartment by the Neva River. He had about 20 minutes worth of material.
how to pick up flour, how to go against the wind, against the wind movement. When I performed in a hospital, that was really imitation of Marcel Marceau. Pure imitation.
The year before, Gregory had gone to see Marcel Marceau, the famous French mime, at the Leningrad Palace of Culture. Did you know that it would be a totally silent performance?
I had no idea. I didn't know it would change my life.
And in the packed theater, in the dark, he'd watched Marcel Marceau, white face paint, black pants, striped shirt, mime picking up a flower in a way that he'd later copy.
He sees a flower and the way he is bending his body and how he smells the flower. All his gestures were stylized. It was not regular gestures like in real life. It was like a magic, complete magic.
But Marceau was also known for stories, short plays of pantomimes he called memo dramas. They could be deeply philosophical, like the one where he plays a man trapped inside a cage who manages to wriggle out only to find himself trapped inside a smaller cage, and so on and so on until he dies.
With your body, you express condition of human being.
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Chapter 7: What themes are explored in the story of 'Man in the Sea'?
Of course, very much so. It evoked my inner feeling towards the system where I was in.
Gregory's Jewish, and Jewish people in the Soviet Union faced a lot of discrimination. It was difficult for him to get a job. He had a special mark on his passport. So he understood that while the state promised equality, I felt on my skin and my body resistance. oppression and secrecy were its currency.
People were ready to change in the Soviet Union. They were ready to change in the system because the system stuck. All this idea of communism, of socialism, people didn't believe it any longer. In my heart, I wanted to help people. I wanted to, if somebody is tied with ropes, I want to untie those ropes.
Oh, that's Marcel Marceau on the beach. Back in his apartment, Gregory shows me some photos of him and Marcel Marceau by the Caspian Sea. You look so young and handsome in this, Gregory.
After his hospital performance, Gregory put together a small troupe of mimes from Leningrad, who he trained and choreographed himself, and they joined a traveling theater that performed on stages and in farmer's fields across the southern Soviet republics, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Azerbaijan, where they happened to play the same city as Marcel Marceau.
And we went to his hotel where he stayed. And I told the receptionist that we are mimes. And he came downstairs and he was so happy because he felt very lonely over there. No one to talk to and so on.
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Chapter 8: How does the episode conclude with Gregory's reflections on art?
And that's you two together in the surf. Yes. Lounging. What were you guys talking about?
All about pantomime. All about pantomime.
By this point, Gregory had started to perform original material. Stuff he wrote himself, provocative, political. And Marcel Marceau liked his work so much that he encouraged Gregory to audition for the theater of Arkady Rykin, a famous Soviet comedian.
1,200 people minimum in audience. The biggest theaters in Soviet Union in different cities.
Reichen was known for his imitations of bumbling bureaucrats and other Soviet characters. He was subversive, but entertaining. Subtle, but pointed. And he wanted to add a mime troupe to his show that also pushed buttons. Slyly.
I was very nervous. I was very nervous.
The audition happened on a bare stage, with a big-time comedian and two others in the audience. Gregory had decided that his group would perform a piece he'd written called Man in the Sea.
A group of pearl hunters are already under the water, hunting for the pearls.
Man in the Sea starts with three mimes, all wearing black leotards. And they're moving in slow motion, like they're underwater, stooping here and there to pick up pearls from the sea floor. And at the center of the stage, a woman in a blue dress lies flat, arms and legs slightly raised, and she's waving them, undulating like she's part of the ocean current.
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