Mission in Mime> Brazilian-born artist uses art form to tell stories

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful kingdom by the sea. The land was filled with good people who led bustling, prosperous lives. But the people were not happy. They slipped by one another, day after day, lost in their solitary thoughts. They needed to talk, and they needed to listen.

They needed to hear a story.

And so, dozens of Mount Desert Islanders braved a raw, rainy Saturday night, venturing to College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, to experience the “Jungle Tales” of Antonio Rocha, a Brazilian-born mime and storyteller, who uses his lithe body and elastic voice to give audiences a time-honored communion that he believes is lacking in today’s society.

“With technology detaching us from the real world, we are disconnecting from each other,” Rocha said in an interview Friday, explaining today’s renaissance of storytelling in America. “Humans are seeking contact through stories,” he said.

Like the orator speaking over an ancient fire, Rocha primarily uses his voice to bring a variety of tales to life. His repertoire runs from classical myth, to modern morality stories about the destruction of the Brazilian rain forest, to memories from his own tropical childhood.

Twelve years of training, with mime masters such as Tony Montenaro and Marcel Marceau, add a visual dimension to Rocha’s storytelling without incorporating complex scenery and costume. With a screech and a twitch of his head, the narrator becomes a snide macaw, then a slight change of expression, seamlessly transforms him back to a scared little boy running though the dark jungle.

“It can’t be about you. You can’t make yourself a star on stage,” Rocha said. “But if you’re the vehicle through which they see the story – that’s when the magic happens.”

And Rocha deftly bewitched the crowd of young and old that filled the college’s Gates Auditorium.

He began with a mime performance titled “Dreams and Illusions,” dancing across the stage on marionette strings, riding an invisible bicycle, swaying high above the ground on a rope and finally, floating through the air, clinging to a giant balloon. The stage became a giant aquarium filled with jello, buoying the performer’s arms and legs up as he made tiny, controlled motions to create his illusions.

“It’s the whole magic of creating another world with just your body,” Rocha explained. He became interested in physical theater as a small boy in Brazil, watching European performers on television.

“My jaw dropped whenever I saw a mime,” he said.

As a college student, Rocha moved to Maine solely to study mime with Tony Montenaro at the University of Southern Maine. Today, he incorporates mime in his storytelling as a unique means of reaching his audience.

“If you don’t connect with the audience, they might as well be reading the story out of a book,” Rocha said.

Saturday, Rocha used his whole body to tell the stories, creating a noble horse that saved a little girl’s life by brushing its coat as he spoke, and enthralling the audience with a boiling pool of hungry piranhas that appeared from his hands.

Sherry and Philip Geyelin, COA trustees who summer in Bass Harbor, saw Rocha perform in Blue Hill several years ago, befriended him and invited him to perform at the college as its sixth annual master storyteller.

The Geyelins fund a storyteller’s visit to COA and area schools each year, explained Sherry Geyelin, who regularly visits nursing homes and schools as a member of a Washington, D.C.,-based storytelling troupe.

“It’s a fascinating art form. It’s as old as speech, and it’s for everyone,” Geyelin said. “Old people like the same stories as young people do.”

Indeed, Rocha’s picture-perfect imitation of an ape lumbering through the audience Saturday night evoked the same amusement from a tiny girl in braids as a heavily bearded grandfather, when Rocha screeched, grinned and crawled over the seats to search audience members’ hair for a quick snack.

After Saturday’s show, as audience members drifted back out to their cars in twos and threes, the empty black night was suddenly filled with stories – people of all ages sharing their own tales of a childhood memory or fantastic adventure.

Rocha would have been proud: “When you tell a story, you’re connecting with who you are,” he said. “It’s your own myth you’re telling.”