FHS group mime to perform at All-State

FAIRFIELD – The Fairfield High School is sending one of its large group speech acts to All-State this weekend in Ames.

The FHS Speech Team competed in four events at the Iowa High School Speech Association's State Large Group Speech Contest on Feb. 5, and earned three division I ratings. Its group mime was selected to perform at the Iowa High School Speech Association’s All-State Large Group Speech Festival, which will be held on the Iowa State University campus in Ames on Saturday, Feb. 19. The Group will perform in Center V in the Scheman Building at 3:40.

FHS’s group mime will perform “Arachne and Athena,” the story of the young girl Arachne who grows up with a prodigious talent of weaving. She is such a good weaver of tapestries that she seeks out the goddess Athena and they have a contest. The whole story is told in mime so there are no words, just background music.

The performers are Andy Winkelman, Connor Hawkins, Evie Messer and Samu Shrestha. Only Winkelman has previous mime experience, being in the mime group that was awarded the IHSSA Group Mime Critic's Choice Award for 2020 just before COVID-19 shut down schools and activities. That performance was called "Mime of the Ancient Mariner" based on the old poetic ballad by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

FHS Speech Coach Fred Hucke said “Mime of the Ancient Mariner” was performed with six students, and this year’s group mime was going to have half that many, until Messer stayed after school one day and decided to join the troupe.

“It turns out, there are a lot more things you can do with four than with three,” Hucke said. “These mimes play six different characters as well as buildings and features of the landscape. For those who know the story, the ending is no surprise, but the last image is one to remember.”

Meet the mimes

Shrestha is the only freshman in the group mime. She performed in the school’s fall play, enjoyed it, and wanted to do something similar in the winter.

“Some of my older friends told me to join, so I did,” Shrestha said. “I was nervous to join the mime group because I didn’t know anything about mime. But it sounded cool, and you don’t hear about many people doing it, so I said ‘yes.’”

Middle school students don’t have speech contest, but there are several other theater events for them. Hucke said there’s a club that plays improv and mime games, and there’s also a school play. Shrestha said she was in the school play in fifth, sixth and eighth grade.

Messer is a sophomore in her second year on the speech team. She performed in the musical theater act “Hairspray” her freshman year, and this year she made a short film called “The Ghost of the Theater Department,” about a ghost who badly wants to be cast in a play that it makes things go wrong until it lands a spot in the play.

Hucke said Messer was in a short film last year, and this year she took a huge leap forward by producing, directing and writing the short film.

Hawkins was in the short film, and one day when he and Messer were staying after school, Hawkins roped her into doing group mime. Messer was hesitant to join at first.

“Connor ran over and pulled me into the room,” Messer said.

After Messer watched the group perform for a few minutes, she thought she would like to give it a try after all.

It was fitting that Hawkins was the one who dragged Messer into the group, since he was also dragged into the group earlier that year by Winkelman.

“I told them I’m not doing solo mime,” Winkelman said.

Messer said she was a little worried to join a group that required so much moving around because she had just undergone knee surgery. That’s the reason she did short film, so she could write a part for herself that didn’t require much walking. Messer said her knee had healed enough that she felt comfortable doing mime, as long as she didn’t have to bend it too much.

Hucke said he expects mime will become popular next year because of the success this year’s group mime has had.

“Many years ago, I remember I was putting up signs and somebody kept taking the mime sign down and stomping on it,” Hucke said. “Then Andrew Wotherspoon did a solo mime and went to All-State, and all of a sudden people were like, ‘You can go to All-State with a mime?’ That’s when people started getting interested in it.”

Winkelman is the lone senior in the group mime. Winkelman performed in several plays in middle school, and did one-act play and mime as a sophomore.

“I stumbled upon mime because I dance, and I felt it was kind of like dance in a weird way,” Winkelman said. “I grew up watching my brother’s ‘Night of Theater’ performances for speech team, and I knew that I wanted to do what he was doing. A busy schedule has led me to not do much with the plays in high school, but this is my connection to theater.”

The four mimes have advice for aspiring mimes coming up through the ranks. Winkelman said the hardest part of being a mime is “not making each other laugh.”

Hawkins added, “And when something does go wrong, you can’t react to it.”