The Journey

Lorin grew up at a time when Marcel Marceau was a household name, regularly appearing on American stages and television. It was also a time when TV variety shows were popular, and among his favorites was Shields and Yarnell. He would imitate the mime duo’s robotic characters, The Clinkers, and practice their mime illusions.

The first time he attended a summer drama camp, at age 13, and mime was offered as an elective class, he was excited to have a chance to learn this silent art from a teacher. A few of his campmates attended a special performing arts program at Pacoima Jr. High School, in the Los Angeles area, where Lorin decided to transfer that fall. At Pacoima’s Television, Theatre, and Fine Arts “magnet” program, Lorin had another chance to learn and perform mime, alongside studies in acting, dance, instrumental music, musical theatre, and screenwriting.

More summer drama camps followed, as did theatre, dance, and music studies in high school. Any time a mime class was offered, Lorin jumped right in. While working on his college theatre degree, Lorin heard, quite by chance, that the great French mime Marcel Marceau was teaching summer seminars in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Even with seven years of on-and-off mime training, the idea of studying with the master of mime was intimidating, but Lorin registered for Marceau’s seminar as a beginning-level student. And even with seven years of mime training, the first thing he learned when he arrived was that he knew very little about mime. The seminar revealed to him that there was so much more to learn and so much more that could be done with this art form. It was also the first time he had a chance to see Marceau perform live on stage.

After years of study in the arts, Lorin already felt proficient at acting, dance, and music, but this experience inspired his decision to choose one performing art to master, and that would be mime.

That was the last of Marceau’s series of Ann Arbor workshops, but two years later, many of the same students gathered in Detroit for a seminar led by Polish mime master Stefan Niedzialkowski, so Lorin returned to Michigan to continue his studies. It would be another three years after that before he would travel to Paris to audition for Marceau’s International School of Mimodrama.

Upon graduation from the Ecole Internationale de Mimodrame de Paris Marcel Marceau, Lorin returned home to Los Angeles to craft a career built on the foundation of these years of study.

The Mime Performer

When starting out as a mime performer, the most readily-available work is interactive, “mingle-with-a-crowd” kind of mime. Although Lorin did a little of this kind of work, he quickly discovered it had little to do with the theatrical mime performance that was his training. He preferred to seek opportunities for presentational mime performance.

While in Paris, he had performed a one-man show consisting of original, short creations called C’est-a-dire… (That is to Say…). He also performed in a special, limited engagement of a show with Marcel Marceau at Paris’ Théâtre de Verdure. Once back in Los Angeles, he brought That is to Say… to the NoHo Arts Festival, and performed individual pieces from the show at various venues.

For the Millennium New Years Eve, Lorin performed a special creation with an ensemble of mime actors at the Windows on the World restaurant atop New York City’s World Trade Center.

Lorin was later invited to represent the United States at the 2nd International Pantomime Festival in Shefa-Amr, Israel, where he again performed his solo works. He co-created the mime show Elements, which he performed along with two other mime actors in Los Angeles and Spring Green, Wisconsin.

The Mime Teacher

Even while studying mime, Lorin felt he would want to share his passion for this art by teaching it to others. Just before leaving for Paris, someone mentioned to him that they had heard that Disney would sometimes consult with mime actors to help their animators with character movement. This idea stuck in his mind until his return to the U.S., and so he approached Walt Disney Feature Animation with a series of workshops he created based on mime techniques called Character Movement for Animation. Disney gave him a shot, and his teaching helped the animators discover new ways of approaching their work. He would return to Disney repeatedly over the next 12 years as a guest instructor, and along the way, he also taught at DreamWorks Animation, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and Rhythm & Hues Studios. (Years later, Lorin would teach visiting animation students from Australia’s Queensland University of Technology before finally travelling to Brisbane to teach as an invited guest of the university.)

Mr. Marceau had always said that an essential component of furthering the art of mime was to establish a school, so Lorin decided to start one of his own. In 2001, he began advertising mime classes for actors and dancers that he taught at various studios in the North Hollywood Arts District and Santa Monica. He eventually named his program Mime Theatre Studio (MTS), and in 2013, MTS found a permanent home at the Studio Theatre at St. Denis Building — a historical landmark across the street from Universal Studios Hollywood that once belonged to Ruth St. Denis, the American pioneer of modern dance. In 2020, the pandemic created both a need and an opportunity to offer online mime courses, so Lorin expanded MTS to include online workshops, classes, and private coaching for students beyond Los Angeles. The online component continues today, and has attracted students from 19 countries on five continents to date. In 2026, MTS celebrates its 25th anniversary.

Teaching in the center of the film and television industry, Lorin was called on as an on-camera mime instructor for reality TV shows like TLC’s Faking It, MTV’s Next, and later, the popular YouTube series Unus Annus. Following his start teaching on camera, he was brought on as a behind-the-scenes movement coach, mime coach, and mime choreographer for feature films, TV series, and commercials. (He would also be cast in some of these productions to play principal or background roles.) This coaching work would become a major part of his teaching, and led to him coaching Academy Award®- and Emmy® Award-nominated stars.

Although Lorin had lived and performed in Las Vegas for three years in between Paris and opening his school, it was only after his return to L.A. that Lorin connected with Cirque du Soleil, leading to a longtime association with Cirque as a guest instructor. Lorin travels to Vegas to train their performers in shows like “O” and The Beatles LOVE, and also teaches for their touring shows, like Amaluna, when they pass through Los Angeles. Additional Cirque du Soleil performers study with Lorin in his mime classes or privately.

Other notable areas of Lorin’s work include choreographing stage movement for members of GRAMMY® Award-winning rock band Weezer and teaching magician-members of the Magic Castle in Hollywood.

Through his public classes and private coaching, Lorin has taught actors, dancers, singers, circus artists, jugglers, magicians, ice skaters, and more.

Two particularly special and important productions Lorin was fortunate to have had the chance to work on were a film and a stage play based on the true story of Marcel Marceau’s heroic efforts before he became a mime, when he worked with the French Resistance to save orphaned Jewish children during WWII by smuggling them to safety in Switzerland. For the feature film Resistance, Lorin trained two-time Academy Award nominee Jesse Eisenberg in Marceau’s mime technique during his preparation to play the starring role as the young Marceau. Lorin also choreographed Eisenberg’s mime scenes for the film. For the off-Broadway play Marcel on the Train, Lorin coached Tony Award®-nominated actor Ethan Slater to play Marceau on stage, and also consulted on the production by providing artistic insight into Marceau’s work from his own experiences and access to historical materials about Marceau’s life and work.

Promoting and Preserving the Art of Mime

Lorin received the 2019-2020 Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute Research Award from Ohio State University, where he spent a month conducting research in their Marcel Marceau Collections.

In 2024, Lorin was invited to participate as a founding member of the Los Angeles Mime Festival, where he has contributed as an organizer, performer, workshop instructor, and panelist. The festival provides yet another avenue for Lorin to promote the art of mime.