A class with quiet kids

On Wednesday at Costa Mesa High School, Keith Berger waged a battle that teachers have been fighting for years: He tried to get a group of students to be quiet.

In this case, really, really quiet.

Berger, a member of the professional mime troupe The Chameleons, was training a dozen middle-school students to move with as little noise as possible. To begin the two-hour class in the campus choir room, he asked the participants to perform a simple feat: rise from a chair and walk up to a white line on the stage, all the time not making a sound.

A girl raised her hand and volunteered, slowly creeping up to the line. She didn’t quite make it; the metal chair squeaked when she got up, and her footsteps were audible on the wooden floor.

After a few other students attempted it unsuccessfully, Alyse Russell took a turn ? and got almost all the way without even making a rustle.

Her secret?

“I rolled my feet,” explained Alyse, 11. “I started with my heel and went to my toe.”

Last week, the Orange County Performing Arts Center worked with the Newport-Mesa Unified School District to create the Visual and Performing Arts Summer Camp Spectacular, a four-day program for middle school students. Among the topics covered in the camp were Flamenco dancing, vocal music, African drumming and this art form, which has been rare since the days of silent comedy.

Indeed, it was those black-and-white classics that first lured Berger, a Los Angeles resident, to the craft.

“What got me hooked on mime was watching old movies of Charlie Chaplin, how he conveyed all that without any words,” he said.

During the morning class on Wednesday, Berger led the students through a variety of mime techniques. Leaving the squeaky chairs behind, he had the group stand in a circle onstage and walk in place without moving their feet, pretend to tug invisible ropes and even move like robots.

The last routine, developed in France during the 1940s, is one of the most popular in miming. To look like a machine, Berger said, an actor had to keep his or her eyes frozen, move in abrupt jerks and keep most of the body still. Before long, most of the students caught on.

“You do it well enough that you could possibly scare some people,” Berger told them. “If you do this around young children, you could freak them out.”

For the students, being a silent clown was just one of many stops during camp, but they said it was a welcome diversion.

“It’s hard, but it’s still fun,” said Molly Settles, 10.dpt-18-onbreak2-cw-CPhotoInfo8N1T1DVM20060718j2kl10ncCredit: Caption: (LA) dpt-18-onbreak-1-cw-CPhotoInfo8N1T1DHU20060718j2kl0dncCredit: PHOTOS BY CHRISTOPHER WAGNER / DAILY PILOT Credit: Caption: (LA)Above, Trista Bell, 11, of Costa Mesa, performs the “invisible rope” with mime performer/instructor Keith Berger at a workshop at Costa Mesa High School on Wednesday. Below, Berger performs the “robot.” Caption: