Mummenschanz, A Mime Troupe With A Bunch Of Big Mouths, At UConn

What a mouth on that guy!

A thick, round tubular hole. A mouth disconnected from other parts of the face. A mouth that glides and dances, almost shouting, almost whistling, almost whispering but ultimately saying nothing.

A mouth that requires an entire person to maneuver it. Three other people each manipulate an eye or nose.

Quite an impression. But try to focus on the mouth.

Mummenschanz, the Switzerland-based mime, mask and movement troupe that first formed, and transformed, more than 40 years ago, is known for its mouths. Many of its dozens of two- or three-minute sketches concern faces growing out of the unlikeliest materials — bags, wires, rolls of toilet paper — and attempting to have a conversation.

The funny, frisky, colorful vignettes have an artistic attraction all their own. But these silent routines also speak volumes about how people (and other creatures) get together and get along in the modern world.

Mummenschanz will do its unusual, undulating, unspoken thing Friday, Jan. 22, at UConn’s Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts. The current show was created to marked the troupe’s 40th anniversary, but has been touring for so long that Mummenschanz has turned 43 in the meantime.

“It used to be an easier show,” says Floriana Frassetto, who has been with Mummenschanz for its entire history.

“Now it’s complicated — four decades of the best of our creations. There are some recent pieces which I’m sure you have not seen before.”

Frassetto, an American by birth who grew up mostly in Italy, co-founded Mummenschanz in 1972 with two Swiss mimes, Bernie Schürch and Andres Bossard. The trio was interested in taking movement and mask performance in new directions.

“I started insinuating myself slowly,” Frassetto remembers of working with Schürch and Bossard. “I had some previous mime and circus training. Originally, there were some spoken numbers. After one year together, it was in Paris, where we found the name Mummenschanz, that we started.”

Mummenschanz quickly found success with small cabaret revues in Europe. An invitation to perform in New York led to a yearslong run on Broadway and international renown. Bossard died in 1932 and Schürch retired in 2012, leaving the 65-year-old Frassetto as the sole founding member who still performs with the troupe.

“The moment I am onstage,” Frassetto says, “my body hurts. But I forget the hurt. My entire body enters another dimension.”

Mummenschanz has toured the world for decades; it usually comes to the United States every few years, but at one point it did not visit for a decade. There have been times when Mummenschanz had more than one troupe on tour at the same time, with the founding members tending to stay in Europe and others venturing elsewhere. For years now, just a single small troupe has made the rounds. The latest U.S. leg of the tour started earlier this month in New Hampshire.

Performing with Frassetto on the tour are Sara Hermann and Oliver Pfulg, who each has been with Mummenschanz for just four months, and Philipp Egli, who has been with the company for three years. The four performers travel with a lighting designer and a company manager.

Despite the cartoonish feel of many of the pieces — big hungry mouths formed of tubes or ropes, stumbling bodies made of airbags and an array of bizarre masks — Mummenschanz prizes the human element in its work.

“It’s not always precise, not always perfect,” Frassetto says. “If it was, we wouldn’t do it.”

One technical element the troupe eschews is music. “We will never use music,” she insists. “Our music is you, the audience.

“What is interesting with our show is that it has no music, no technology, no crazy lighting. It looks so simple. The simplicity underlies the emotions, and you realize how much you need the emotions.”

Mummenschanz is, above all else, entertaining — short bursts of bright creativity, taking a range of shapes and sizes. But Frassetto also feels that the company has points to make about the difficulty of communicating in the modern age, accepting differences and working together. “We try to respond to some problems of society,” she says, “like the difficulty of humans to understand each other.”

Being on tour for so long, the outspoken Frassetto can’t help noticing “how parts of the world have become ugly. And I don’t mean just the architecture.” Pressed to elaborate, she adds, “I do not want to offend. If I did, I would offend a couple of politicians who I will not name.”

Might the harmonious, diplomatic and endlessly adaptable Mummenschanz craft a beautiful response to this ugliness?

“Oh, no. That’s very difficult,” Frassetto says. “You need words for that.”

MUMMENSCHANZ is at the University of Connecticut’s Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 22. Tickets are $32 and $36, $20 for children and students, and $15 for UConn students. jorgensen.uconn.edu