I've finished part one with my first big performance at the square full of people in Warsaw, Poland where I probably really felt the energy from the audience and the happiness I can bring with pantomime to peoples lives. So let me continue my story from here.
Starting as the youngest participant at Festival PAN in my hometown in 1996 as a younger part of Studio of Pantomime Kasprzyk founded by my father, I was integrated in the every year creative process of making mime etudes and performances and I loved it.
First years I was only part of the performances, performing some minor roles because I was still not that comprehensive in my mime technique and the older part of our mime studio was just so good. At least in my memories of a small boy being bad at mime. And that was my main motor when it came to being better at mime. My older brother and other older kids were really good and I wanted to be as good as them and so I was creating and practicing mime techniques to match theirs one day.
A big breakthrough for me came when some of the oldest kids left Studio Kasprzyk to live their young adult lives and an empty position needed to be filled in our improvisation team of three for the improvisation competition that we participated in at the Festival GAGY in Kremnica, Slovakia. It was a prestigious competition and a big deal and the I was suddenly the third member of the team, replacing the oldest boy, so I was suddenly again the youngest participant in a competition and a team. I remember saying no way and feeling out of my league, not having good enough technique or ideas but they convinced me that I am a perfect match and that I can add to the team and I had no idea that that was the beginning of our super successful improvisation team.
I was still very young and 4 years younger then my two other teammates so I didn't contribute much but I was performing with inner fire and watching and learning to have not only creative but also a brisk mind. Because in the improvisation competions we were participating in, the rules were simple: You take a random prompt and have 3 minutes to prepare a 3 minute etude from it. And we were the only team doing all this without using words on stage and people loved it. We got better and started winning.
After some years and a lot of improvising and some more changes in the team as more kids were turning to adults and leaving the studio we were one of the best improvisation teams in Slovakia. We have won the competition in GAGY five times in a row and we were in top 3 every month in the competition taking place in Zilina and every year at Festival PAN, where we weren't that one special team that doesn't speak because no one speaks at Festival PAN.
Parallel to our improvisation success story, we had a huge heureka moment in making of mime performances. At the beginning of Studio Kasprzyk we made wonderful and deep performances that weren't understood well by the juries at the competition of children theatre. And so we started to make something we truly loved and were passionate about and it brought Studio Kasprzyk to it's peak years of existence. The parody era came.
We decided that we will have fun not only at our training sessions but also on stage. A crucial decision and a life changing one too as I am back after all these years remembering to just have fun and enjoy the time on stage and also off stage to be honest. We have made a parody trilogy of traditional Slovak fairytales and while we were still deeply misunderstood by juries, every single audience we were performing for was leaving our performances with tears and pain from laughing so hard for almost an hour. And those were the best years, just travelling around the country and making people laugh and forget their problems.
And suddenly I was in my teens, making better and better etudes, getting better and better at doing pantomime after visiting countless workshops at Festival PAN and spending countless hours practising at our weekly mime trainings or just at home with my father. Somehow I became one of the oldest and most experienced ones in the studio and still on a winning streak in improvisation and other competitions but with my peers and not as the youngest of the group anymore. We started added a little bit of seriousness to our performances and made performances "Aesop" and "Check - Mate" that won some awards and we even performed at a huge festival Colours of Ostrava in Czechia.
For me, the last success of our era in Studio of Pantomime Kasprzyk was the performance "The Wooden Knights" in which we went out of our comfort zone as we needed to learn some medieval sword fighting techniques and puppetry because we made the last parody but this time with big puppets of horses and making fun of the tournament with wooden swords. We toured many medieval festivals in Slovakia but also in Poland and Czechia with this performance making the audiences laugh again as they saw the real tournament and then ours for perfect contrast. And we could perfect it as we saw the real tournaments at the festivals because that is the base of pantomime, observing your surroundings.
And while performing The Wooden Knights all over, we grew into young adults and instead of participating at Festival PAN, we began to help organise it. And I'll finish this mimeblog with a story from the festival, when we realised we really grew out of the competition into legendary status.
It was the last Festival PAN we participated in as a team in the improvisation competition. It was after years of winning or being in top 3 places at every improvisation competition happening and we didn't know yet that it's our last. We got a hint when we were getting ready in the backstage with all the other teams and we saw that we are the oldest and that we are not kids anymore but we shrugged the feeling because improvising became a habit we loved. As the evening continued, after two rounds we were leading with most points but we were deeply unhappy as our ideas were very lame in our eyes and we were getting the points by merely appearing on the stage as people were laughing at us almost automatically, without us doing too much. And after the final round, that we also botched, we ended up standing on stage with the rest of the teams and feeling uncomfortable as you do after a performance that just doesn't go well. All the points were counted and we have won by mere few points as we feared. It was the only time I really didn't want to win because we just weren't good enough and didn't deserve the points. But only few points behind us and winning the second place were these adorable kids, the youngest team in the competition and as we watched them from the side we were really hoping they will win because they had everything except beingthe legends of improvisation.
And so, without saying a word to each other or looking at each other, while standing on the stage with the cup, we turned to those kids and gave them the cup because unlike us, they really deserved it and worked hard for it that night. After this night we knew that one fun era of our lives have just ended and we became adults and not after long we went our separate ways to work or study at universities and the golden era of Studio of Pantomime Kasprzyk came to an end.
But that was again only the beginning.
So if you want to have fun and do something meaningful and touch people's hearts, start doing pantomime. If you want to have even more fun, bring your friends and make them join you on your journey of becoming a mime. If you think it's not for you, think again because mime is for everyone. And if you just want to understand pantomime, support mimes and have more fun watching mime as more informed audience, you are very welcome and I will happily teach you, guide you or entertain you.
Be sure to follow for the rest of my story.