Flashback

In this photo from 1974, I’m captured mid-movement as an aspiring mime artist during my theatre studies at York University. As I write in my new memoir, Heart on My Sleeve, the glorious ’70s were a time of big dreams and unbridled creativity, and I was enamoured with the art of physical expression.

After a year of acting studies in New York, I enrolled at York in 1972, joining talented classmates such as Sky Gilbert in the Theatre Performance program. Though I craved an academic degree, my true passion was mime. I supplemented my York classes by studying under a renowned mime artist downtown.

Paris soon called, and I spent a year training with the legendary Étienne Decroux. Longing for more university education, I returned to York to complete my second year of drama in 1974. That’s when the student documentary Portrait of a Mime captured my miming – it still lives in York’s archives, shot by Rene Ohashi (BFA ’76), with direction by Alexandra Hoy (BA ’75, LLB ’78), another fellow student who went on to become associate chief justice of the Court of Appeal for Ontario.

After more courses that summer, I departed for Newfoundland in 1975, becoming the province’s only mime artist with a job at CBC Radio as an arts reporter. And so began my incredible media career, sparked by the wild idealism of my York years. ■

— Jeanne Beker