Moinul Haque: The pioneer of mime in Northeast India who turns silence into a powerful mode of communication

He makes you listen to silence.

Moinul Haque, the pioneer of mime in India’s Northeast region, also makes his audience realise that silence around them is not just absence of sound. And the stories told in silence can be as powerful as those in the world of sound. Sometimes, they can be even more powerful, when scripted with perfect facial expression and body movements.

The journey began with chasing a childhood dream of flying in an aeroplane free of cost. He often saw an aeroplane flying above his house in Hedayetpur locality of his home city Guwahati. But he could not dream of buying a ticket to fly due to poor financial condition of his family. Today, he flies to places across India and other parts of the globe to perform this oldest art form. The organisers book the air ticket for him and he does not have to pay for it.

The 63-year old popular self-taught mime artist has more than 6000 stage performances in India and abroad to his credit. But there were many twists and turns along this long and eventful journey.

He started as an actor with different theatre groups during his school days at the age of 12 years. In 1970, he started performing as a mono-actor and specialised in sound effects. Later, he realised that he is more interested in comedy performances. He tried to express ordinary things in a comic style through an easy medium so that it is easy for people to understand. During his college days he was one of founders of a popular performing group of Assam-Sound and Comedy.

“I used to get good honorarium as a comedian. But I could sense that I would not be able to sustain for long as a comedian so I had a desire to learn an art form which would be tough to learn and cannot easily be picked by others and which requires much perseverance. When I changed my career as mime artiste my honorarium reduced to nil. I started from zero earnings,” Haque tells nezine.com, as memories of initial years of his journey flashed through his mind.

Taking the first step was really tough. There was no one in the field of mime in Guwahati, and anywhere in the Northeast region. But he never thought of taking two steps back and was steadfast on achieving his dream. After observing his keen interest in mime, one of his teachers gave him a book by famous mime artist Jogesh Dutta of West Bengal. The book helped him a lot to understand the art form and attracted him to the beautiful world of mime.

Haque really wanted to be under the guidance of a teacher. He needed a torch bearer in his life, but he did not get any such opportunity. But he did not give up hope and started self-learning. He began learning and practicing this art. He learnt dance, body flexibility and several exercises to keep himself fit.

However, back home making people familiarise with mime was even a bigger challenge. He had to explain people about this art form. People had so many questions like why did he smear the white paint on his face? Will he dance? And so on. Apart from learning it for himself, Moinul Haque also had to shoulder the responsibility of popularising mime in this part of the globe. In 1992, he founded the Mime Academy, the first institution of its kind in northeast region to popularise the art form among the new generation.

Ever since he got the first invitation to perform in a Mime Festival in Kolkata in 1988, Haque’s determination and perseverance brought him many opportunities. Meeting and interacting with internally famed French Mime Artiste Marcel Marceau and Laurent Decol in mime workshops figure high among them for him. He received the Sangeet Natak Akademi award in 2009 for his contribution to the art of Mime.

Socio-economic issues such as hunger, poverty, dowry, brain drain, religious harmony dominate his mime productions. His mime plays “Puppet”, “Paisa”, “Gobhait Chor”, “Bridge”, “Health-Centre”, “Dahez”, “Hunger”, “America” imprints indelible images of contemporary societies grappling with multiple socio-economic crises and provoke the audience to ponder about the solutions as they leave the auditorium.

A visiting faculty of several universities and institutions, Moinul Haque has expanded his Mime Academy and set up a studio and an auditorium with 120 audience capacity, inaugurated on January 12 to facilitate budding mime artistes of the region sharpen their skills. He wants them to expertise in the art of transforming silence into the most powerful mode of communication through mime.

Mishmita Deb, Swarnali Saha

(Mishmita Deb and Swarnali Saha are students of B.A. Mass Communications, Assam Don Bosco University. They have produced this story as part of their Winter Internship at NEZINE.)

Photograph and video interview of Moinul Haque- Mishmita Deb and Swarnali Saha