The World's Oldest Mime: A Life in Three Acts

Role: Co-director, Editor

Client: The New Yorker

"At eighty-seven years old, I am the world’s oldest mime,” Richmond Shepard says. A New York native, Shepard studied under the mime legend Etienne Decroux and alongside Marcel Marceau in Paris in the nineteen-fifties. He went on to be featured in countless national commercials, and made appearances on daytime talk shows and television programs such as “The Jeffersons” and “Kojak.” 

Nowadays, Shepard says, a mime is often considered just “a pest on the street, making a wall and asking for money.” But this short film, which follows Shepard through the New York City subway and streets, explores the fleeting connections and subtle interactions that the art of miming can still inspire. “A lot of communication can happen in silence,” Shepard says. “But you have to listen.”

Official Selection, Tacoma Film Festival 2017