A word here on the man who worked as the Presenter of Cards from 1952 to 1979. He accompanied Marceau on nearly six thousand performances, through seventy-five countries.
Marceau was a particular man. The card must be held completely straight, while Verry’s arm dangled at an awkward angle, as if halted midstep.
John Beaufort wrote that Verry made “title-card-holding itself a fine art.” Frances Herridge marveled at his “immobility that rivals a statue’s.”
Verry also studied with Decroux. The teacher was obsessed with divorcing mime from narrative, and so he created le mime statuaire. “My passion, my zeal for mime . . . grew out of my fervor for sculpture and its sensual, carnal pleasure, which inspired me even as a child.” Decroux wanted to imbue theater with these properties.
To Marceau, mime was a kind of riddle. The audience was challenged to recognize the action, identify the character, situate the scene within a story. How to fill the blank spaces?
The lights came up and Verry stood as if petrified, holding a black board with white lettering: The Cage. The first clue. A starting point for the rest of the performance.
Marceau compared Verry’s costume to the etchings of Honoré Daumier and Jacques Callot. Bright yellow and blue feathers stuck out of his oversized hat. Long tassels dangled from his sleeves. He wore rich turquoise leggings. He definitely wasn’t Bip.
Clive Barnes wrote of Verry, “He holds, caught up in some frozen moment of heroic poetry, the card announcing Marceau’s next miracle. He is quite a minor miracle himself.”
The lights faded to black over Verry, and when they rose again, there was Marceau.
But remember. Time is material. You can feel it erode your skin, like wind and rain.
The mime keeps count in heartbeats and breaths.
After decades, he is weathered.