Masking

The First part of our workshop was our director explaining the basics of mask work to all the actors.  This taught me that working with a mask involves much more physicality than traditional, naturalistic acting, this is because the audience and other actors on stage cant respond to your facial expressions, as the mask is covering your face.  One of the main basic elements of mask work is to NEVER touch the mask as it breaks the experience.  We also discovered that when you use masks you cant turn side on to the audience, as they can then see where the mask ends on your face and this also breaks the experience.

Then the director did some mask work to show us how it was done. I learnt a few things through this.  I firstly saw that the director was using her long hair to cover up the edges of the mask, as I do not have long hair it gave me an idea that I could use a hood on a jacket to the same effect.  Then we learnt that the most important part of mask work was ‘clocking the audience’ this meant, showing the audience that you realised they were there.

The other exercises that we performed in this lesson refined our ability to use masks in our performances, and testing masks ourselves let us find our own way of making mask work have the greatest effect on the audience, I discovered that the closer you can get to the audience and the stranger the physicality you can perform is the more effective mask work can be.

Towards the end of the class I began to wonder why mask work had actually been necessary.  Out of the lesson I researched why mask work was relevant to Artaud.

"The primary tool we will use to help us enter fully and truthfully into imaginary circumstances is via extensive “neutral mask” work. The Neutral, or Universal, mask was originally developed by mask and clown teacher, Jacques LeCoq, as a learning tool for actors - to help them develop emotional honesty and economy of movement, and to give them an inner core that is balanced, centered, and fully present. The mask itself is a simple, lightweight, unremarkable looking white or clay colored mask held comfortably to the face with a string or elastic."
---http://actingstudionotes.blogspot.co.uk/p/neutral-mask.html

Artaud wanted full emotional honesty from his actors and so mask work would help him achieve this, also the lack of emotion on the face of his actors would have added fear to his audience, which is something that he strove for.  To me, this quote explains that for an actor to be able to perform as any character, it is important that they let the emotions come out physically rather than thinking too much, I feel that masking refined my ability to do this, as it makes your body react instinctually to circumstances.  I believe it is interesting that one small piece of equipment can be so useful to an actors arsenal.