Speechless after dark
Bar- and club-owners in Berlin are introducing mime artists onto the streets this Summer to combat the growing numbers of rowdy alcohol-fuelled tourists…. Yes, mime artists.
They’ll be out in force – well, groups of four or five – holding up placards asking outdoor evening revellers to tone it down and to emhpasise the anti-litter message, they’ll be trying to stuff gigantic bottles into tiny bins. They’ll also act out silent morality tales in front of drinkers in some of Berlin’s bars and cafés to encourage aforementioned revellers to consider the consequences of their boisterous actions as they wend their way homewards from a night on the town.
According to a recent report in the Mirror newspaper, lawmakers in the German capital have been struggling over the past few years to deal with growing numbers of drinking tourists.
Streets are often littered with broken bottles, while drunks sway down the streets singing.
Sound familiar?
“We don’t want to give people orders,” explained Lutz Leichsenring from a group representing the city’s bar and club owners, “We want to use street theatre to sensitise tourists to the problems of noise and littering and to make them aware that people are living and trying to sleep nearby.”
The mime project is to run over 15 weekends this Summer in Berlin’s Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district and for those who don’t feel uplifted by the mime artists, there’s every chance that troublemakers who persist will feel another kind of uplift altogether – from Berlin’s finest – and they won’t be miming….
Let’s (not) hear it for Berlin’s mime artists this Summer.
