Gamarjobat has performed in over 35 countries around the world. In 2021 he brought sporting pictograms to life during the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympic Games. He talks about the power of mime.
"Direct Talk"
Our guest today is Gamarjobat,
a mime artist entertaining audiences worldwide.
Mime is a theater form in which performers use body movements and facial expressions
but no speech.
To date, Gamarjobat has performed in over 35 countries.
He's won awards at some of the world's largest art festivals.
And in 2021,
he wowed global audiences by bringing sporty pictograms to life
during the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympic Games.
Recently he's been working on expanding the scope of his live solo act.
He's created a wordless comedy show
that takes audiences on a two-hour plus dramatic journey.
His gripping performance captivates audiences.
What makes Gamarjobat's performances so soul stirring?
He shares with us his passion for mime.
Mime Speaks Louder than Words
A lot of people think of mime as a fringe art form.
But for me, it outshines all other forms of
popular entertainment.
And I consider it part of my job
to show people my vision of mime
and just how incredible it is.
November 2022.
Gamarjobat puts on a comedy show billed as intense,
volatile and positively explosive.
He dazzles with a rapid-fire transformation.
Next, he invites a young boy from the audience onto the stage.
Then as a clumsy pianist, he attempts to put on a performance.
That was so funny. I laughed so hard it hurt.
He sparks your imagination and really makes you believe.
People think it's about creating an illusion,
about making the invisible, visible.
That's what they imagine when they think about pantomime or mime.
But what a mime does is convey the thoughts and feelings
of the person behind that invisible wall.
What am I doing here?
For example, you come running out of breath.
Maybe you're exasperated about something.
Or if you come running, maybe you're trying to get away.
Maybe there's somewhere you want to go.
For me, there's more to mime than technicality.
There's something deeper there.
Gamarjobat's decision to enter the wordless world of mime
may have stemmed from his introverted nature.
He says he's been extremely shy since he was a child,
and doesn't feel comfortable in social situations.
He spent his early 20s searching for his calling
and trying to figure out how he wanted to live his life.
He knew he wanted to be independent and do his own thing.
When I was young, I wondered about my reason for being
and what it meant to live.
Then I thought about my childhood teachers.
I had no idea if they were still alive,
but what I was sure of was that they lived on inside of me in my memories.
I realized that was a kind of being, of living.
And wouldn't it be cool if I could inspire many others in the same way?
I started to think about doing something in front of people,
and it occurred to me to become a mime.
Mimes can be a solo act, and your performance
can live on within your audiences.
Gamarjobat wanted to speak to people's hearts
without having to use actual words.
And he was starting to believe that mime was the way to make his wildest dreams come true.
He attended a miming workshop
where he happened to meet his future instructor.
After seven hard years of apprenticeship, he struck out on his own.
On weekends, he'd rent out small theaters to put on his own shows.
I wanted to become the best in Japan,
but when you're just starting out, you can't draw a crowd.
And the reality is, no crowd means no income.
To put on shows, you need staff and crew,
which means money out of your pocket.
Also, in order to rent the space, you have to pay the venue,
so I was in the red.
But at the time, it kind of felt to me like being in the red was normal.
You pay your dues.
Looking for a way to break through,
he took up an invitation from a fellow mime to form a duo.
He said to me, performing together would mean twice the draw,
and we could split the venue cost between us.
There are only positives.
If we team up, it'll lighten the load.
If we're going to do this, the two of us should work together to make a single act.
Soon the duo was able to draw in moderately-sized crowds,
but they were still performing at small theaters.
No one knew who we were,
so we started thinking, what could we do to put ourselves in front of bigger crowds?
Well, through mime, you can touch people without the use of words.
That meant it would translate overseas.
Performing abroad could expose us to more people.
Realizing that they needed something to make an immediate impression,
the duo decided to get mohawks.
At a festival in Germany,
they became friendly with a group of dancers from the country of Georgia.
The only word they could catch was "gamarjobat" which means "hello."
They loved the sound of the word so much, it became the name of their unit.
From there, the duo's popularity overseas took off.
Audiences far and wide loved their colorful look,
manic comedic energy, and penchant for crowd work.
In 2004,
they won the Double Act Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe,
one of the world's largest art festivals.
In the following years,
they were invited to perform at over 35 countries around the world.
They became a globetrotting comedy sensation.
Lots of people would watch us perform abroad.
One time, in a large venue,
one of the other acts said they dreaded having to follow us.
To promote our shows, we walked around town with our mohawks.
More and more people were asking us,
"What time are you guys performing?"
"What venue?"
As a shy person, if I'd stayed in my shell,
no way would I ever have gotten a mohawk.
So the fact that I live the kind of life where a mohawk makes sense,
I'm glad I went for it.
In 2019, his partner in mime left the group to move to Europe.
Since then, Gamarjobat has been busy working as a solo performer.
In 2021,
he channeled his ethos as an entertainer into a special live performance
for the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympic Games.
A live-action recreation of all 50 official sporting pictograms.
Gamarjobat wrote, produced and directed the segment
which captivated audiences around the world.
We had a five-minute slot, so we decided I'd perform live
with the video up on the stadium screens and broadcast to millions.
Doing it live meant there were risks.
Something could have gone wrong.
So there was talk about how maybe we should just prerecord the segment.
But I wanted the energy of doing it in real-time right there in the stadium.
I asked them to let us do it live.
We gave it our all to recreate the 50 pictograms,
and I think that's what got the audience and the viewers at home emotionally involved.
Through our performance, we were able to bring those pictograms to life.
November 2022.
Gamarjobat is getting ready to put on a show in Hiroshima.
It's one of the final stops on his nationwide mime tour.
For two hours,
he holds the stage alone without uttering a single word.
Here, a lonely man in despair has an unexpected encounter.
He regains his will to live,
and then the days and months pass.
Until one day, it's time to say goodbye.
At the end of the show, the audience erupts in applause.
You're drawn into the story because it's wordless.
It was incredible. So moving.
It's amazing how he makes you believe the illusion is real.
I was in tears at the end.
Mimes don't use words and don't have a set on stage.
There's a reason for that.
It's not that we can't speak or won't speak,
it's that there's no need for words.
Our shows are for everyone from children to adults,
and if you have a hundred people in the audience,
they can enjoy it a hundred different ways.
It all depends on who's watching.
It's surprising to me how sometimes there'll be people at my shows
who discover something about themselves,
how they see or feel things.
I think that kind of experience is something that's unique to mime.
(Do you have any words to live by?)
"Life is an ongoing journey."
I think that many people, when they reach a certain age,
they feel like they're over the hill.
But even if I'm past my physical prime,
mentally, I've still got my edge.
I just have to put in the effort.
In life, there's always more to learn,
so I focus on who I'll be tomorrow or a year from now.
I want to keep growing.