Having grown out of the Pantomimentheater Prenzlauer Berg, the Mime Centrum Berlin functioned from 1990 as a place for production, further education, cooperation and international dialogue in the field of the performing arts, combining theatre practice, reflection and documentation. Its work centred on the question of the foundations of movement in theatre, of the physical, holistic presence of the performers in general. The Mime Centrum investigated forms such as mime Decroux, classical pantomine or Meyerhold's biomechanics for theatre.

Under the direction of Thilo Wittenbecher, teachers from Germany and abroad taught the basics of body and movement theatre in workshops; mimes, actors, directors and choreographers gave project seminars on mime corporel, biomechanics and object theater. Theatre pedagogical and theatre aesthetic concepts were clarified in public presentations of work, video lectures and discussions. The daily morning movement training for actors, which was open to all, with renowned instructors such as Anke Gerber, Oliver Pollak, Tony de Maeyer and Selina Senti, became particularly well known. In theatre research, documentations and publications were produced with international theatre scholars.

For more than 20 years, the Mime Centrum coordinated the video documentation of dance, funded by the Berlin Senate, for the audio-visual recording of publicly funded productions in the independent dance scene in Berlin. 

The Mime Centrum Berlin has been funded by funding bodies including: the Nederlands Mime Centrum, Amsterdam; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, The Hague; Federal Ministry of the Interior, Berlin; Senate Department for Science, Research and Culture, Berlin/Senate Chancellery - Cultural Affairs; Hauptstadtkulturfonds, Berlin; Stiftung Kulturfonds, Berlin; German-Czech Future Fund, Prague and Förderband e.V. Berlin.

Since 2011, the Mime Centrum has been a permanent ITI Centre Germany project. The once separate work areas of the Mime Centrum now belong to the International Theatre Institute as formats, projects and areas; collaboration with artists, scientists, archivists, students and those interested in theatre will of course continue.