The Best Brain Friendly Site on the Web
by Jessica Todd

My adventures searching on the Internet for sites about Mime has been a task. I have found a few worthwhile sites and one of those sites is Le Centre du Silence at www.indranet.com/lcds.html. This page is brain friendly.

This site is composed simply but is very dramatic. It is easy to look at. The first thing that pops up is the logo, which is a black and white face that is very captivating. One is automatically swept in to great interest. As the page scrolls down there is an uncomplicated table that simply lists the contents. Hooray! No flashy, eye-invading buttons here. The colors are kept simple: green, black, red, purple, and blue with a white background. This site loads quickly so the adventurer isn't likely to switch off.

This page is easily accessible on most of the search engines, although I found it difficult to find Le Centre du Silence under the heading Mime on most of the engines except for Yahoo!. Mime is also a term in computer lingo and it comes up 99% of the time. This problem arises because of poor organization by the engines, not this web site. The Web Master has done a very thorough job of listing every page of this site on the engines. An adventurer can type in Samuel Avital, Le Centre du Silence, or other related words and find this site with ease.

Another great plus of this page is the content. Samuel Avital, director of Le Centre du Silence, has put together a very thorough presentation of Mime and creativity. The pages that I found to be most helpful to my research were: About Le Centre du Silence; Mark, My Words About Le Centre du Silence; Body Speak; Discover Your Hidden Power; Moving Body and Mind A New Look at Mime; History of LCDS; LCDS links page; Samuel Avital, Director; and What People are saying about LCDS. All of these articles had a lot of information about mime and how it unleashes creative powers in all mediums.

This page also has significant credibility. Samuel Avital has been studying, performing, and teaching mime for over thirty years. He has studied with famous mimes like Marcel Marceau, Etienne Decroux, and Jean-Louis Barrault. Mr. Avital has also written many books about mime and he has been nominated for awards in performance. Jane Evenson the author of Moving Mind and Body, one of the articles on this web site, is a business consultant, and writer. She is currently studying mime. Mark Olsen the author of Mark, My Words about Samuel is a teacher at Penn Sate, author, director, and actor. He has studied mime.

The Links page of this web site is also very helpful. I found links like World Of Mime Theater, Kiko the mime, Alessandra the artist, TooBa Physical Theatre Center, and many others. These sites are great candidates for further research.

Le Centre du Silence is the best that an adventurer could come across for researching Mime and the creative influences on art of all kinds. The links all worked, the content was thorough and direct, and everything was easily accessible. The appearance of the web site is extraordinary; there is something so nice about the simplicity of it. This site is definitely one of the few, easy to surf, information- packed sites out there.

Jessica Todd
jmt@plinet.com
Sunday, Oct. 26, 1997