Playwright Portrait, Bill Bowers, Excerpt from It Goes Without Saying

Bill Bowers Playwright and Mime, 2007

pswb©2011

IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING

Bill:

When people find out that I am a mime,

it usually begs the question, "Why?"

"What got you interested?"

"How could this have happened to you??!"

I’m a mime because I'm from Montana. Not that Montana is known as a hotbed of mime action; but still, it is BIG and QUIET. All that sky and all that land…it can render you …speechless. And that moon. There is nothing like a Montana Moon. When I was a kid I spent a lot of time looking up at that moon. I thought it was there just for me. That it followed me wherever I went. And I thought it actually changed shape from night to night:- from half to whole, crescent to quarter. I remember the night when I was about eight, I first saw the whole of the moon…when I saw the dark side too. I thought I was the only one who knew. It was our secret. Just between us.