Theatre Mask Work
Analisa Wack
Tut'Zanni Theatre Company is a commedia dell'arte based physical theatre company that has performed and taught in NYC, LA, Italy, Arkansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Chicago, DC, and more. commedia, commedia dell'arte nyc, physical theatre, mask, mask classes, commedia classes, masked theatre nyc, nyc, nyc theatre, nyc theatre classes, acting classes, physical theatre classes, commedia school, physical theatre school, improv, comedy, interactive theatre, ALi Landvatter, Dory Sibley, Patrick Berger, Liam Mulshine, Allegra Libonati, Molly Tomhave
Sarah also works with my absolute favorite charity in the world, Clowns Without Borders. Charities come in all shapes and sizes, and each has different purposes and goals. This one, I feel, does some of the noblest work in the world.
This is the bravest and most emotionally impactful work I have ever found; to find someone distraught by loss and despair, and help them forget their troubles for a moment and to laugh, by bringing magical fools from across the world to perform for them.
After the opening ensemble-building warm-ups, Sarah introduced us to the masks. These are Sartori masks, made of leather by the Italian workshop of Donato Sartori. He was approached by Jaques Lecoq with a radical proposal: create a mask that is not any character at all, but has no character itself.
The neutral mask, when placed on the face of a performer, is not entirely neutral. It is a mask sitting on the face of a person, a character, who has idiosyncrasies and characteristics that make them a unique individual.
I found this very illuminating to discover the character of the performer. We were analyzing the characteristics they innately possessed, characteristics that they could not hide. These were the essential building blocks of the character of each performer, apparent even while they were in a neutral state.
After some time for feedback, Sarah would direct the performer to make microscopic changes in the body and stance to eliminate the presence of these characteristics. A millimeter forward in the neck, a millimeter back from the sternum, and suddenly, the performer would disappear. Once these defining characteristics were gone, all that was left was the Neutral Mask.
There is a loss of breathing when we are actively doing something, and focusing on it intently. This can make us tense up our bodies, and this scrambles the communication we are trying to convey through the instrument of our bodies.
The neutral mask moves slowly. The tendency this creates is to pause everything (including the breath) and slowly, intentionally make a movement into the next position, but this can freeze the entire system and make all movement look mechanical.
Watching this as an audience member, while my fellow workshop participants were conducting their exercises, was just as enlightening. Being an audience member is even more important when doing mask work, because it is a time when you can purely observe the mask, and see how it creates emotions and reactions in the members of the audience. There were times when someone would turn their head slightly and dart their eyes to the side, and suddenly the mask was a face. It was a living face, because it breathed.
These moments are so elusive and subtle, they are difficult to capture and replicate. This is what makes mask work so fascinating to me; you have to coax the life of the mask out into being, and it can disappear in a moment. Sustaining its presence takes finesse, patience, and breath.
So we have to continually remind ourselves onstage, when we are ignoring the existence of the audience and the reality around us, to breathe, all the time. Breathing is what makes the mask come alive.
This is a skill that an actor must master, because no matter what the audience is doing, where your stage is set, or what is happening in the environment, the actor must believe that he is in the environment of the character, or the audience will never believe it.
Sports athletes have a great capacity for visualization, as well, but only in a very limited setting. Within the confines of their game, they visualize making their goal, or scoring their point, or seeing their ball make it through a hoop, and then they follow through with actions that fulfill that visualization.
We played follow the leader, and one person would walk as normally as they possibly could, in their own walk. Everyone else would follow, and try their best to mimic the walk. All the stances and habitual movements were taken on by the rest of the ensemble, and then the leader would step out and watch the group imitating them.
As an exercise in introspection, this was huge. We were all gifted with an examination of our personalities from kind and gentle observers. We had to identify and understand our own personality completely in order to be able to come fully into the neutral mask.
All of us were pleased by the feedback, which was very rewarding and validating. My walk was judged to be strong and purposeful, with a theatricality to it, and this is how I would like my own character to be judged. I was told by one fellow actor that because I have complete command of my body, every movement, no matter how slight, was interpreted as being intentional. Although I have many unconscious movements I do not recognize, it was very useful feedback to realize that others think I am being intentional even with my minor, unrecognized actions.
I woke up on the plain, looked around quickly, and got dejected. I played a character that realized he was lost on a plain, and maybe he had seen it before. He had an opinion about the experience, and this is where I failed.
We would wake up on the plain, and enter a Forest. (Not any forest in particular, the Forest of all Forests.) We could feel the tree next to us, and walk around it. We could pantomime the branches or vines hanging from the sky above, and push them aside.
The neutral mask is not any specific character. It is the Person of all Persons. The space which it inhabits is not any particular place; it is the Place of all Places. If the neutral mask goes into a forest, it is the Forest of all Forests.
You can look at a piece of wood with three legs under it of different lengths, and you might not want to call it a table, you might want to call it a chair, or junk, or art. Whether or not you call it a table depends on how closely this one particular object aligns with the Form of Table, with the Platonic Ideal of what a table should be.
Some constructs of wood are so elegantly table-like that there can be no question that it is a table, and it would not be suitable as anything else. You would feel ashamed to sit on it as if it were a chair, because it has come so close to the ideal of Table that it is sacrilegious to use it as anything else.
To portray something so absolute is just as impossible as creating the Table of all Tables, except instead of using the craft of woodworking, which leaves a permanent and lasting object as the result of its craftsmanship, we are using performance, which only lasts for the eternity of the present moment.
We can only measure our proximity to this ideal of neutrality by how completely we can reduce the presence of the performer in the performance. And once that reduction is as complete as it can possibly be, then we are challenged to breathe into neutral.
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Claudia Alick: I was already negotiating the inability to be physically present in a theatre and trying to find ways to get access as an audience member and a producer. Then 2020 hit, and it was like a miracle. I was inside theatres all over the country. Everybody agreed that their needs were bound up in mine. Then 2021 hit, and everybody was like, "We're done now. We're going to go back to what we were doing. You're going to be fine, girl." Now, my relationships with theatre institutions in physically shared spaces are rare. I have to be a producer so that I can control the level of COVID safety precautions. My theatre practice has become deeply digital because physically shared space is dangerous now.
Claudia: It is beyond disgusting that individuals are expected to advocate for individual solutions to a global pandemic. I'm a cynical, bitter, cranky person. I am not going to call your theatre and beg to get in. How dare you? I will not watch your play. Go out of business! Isn't that awful? That's where I'm at. The theatre company that offers me a mask-mandated evening, I can say yes to that. "Here's a night you can come, Claudia, and we will create conditions of not killing you so you can enjoy this play." I'm going to buy that ticket.
My biggest challenge right now is deciding that I want to be in loving community with people who are actively endangering my life with nonsense lies. I have to do a lot of deep breathing and trying to be my best self and lean into the future of us doing this well together, but I get angry.
Ezra Tozian and Moira O'Sullivan in Dream Hou$e by Eliana Pipes at Long Wharf Theatre. Directed by Laurie Woolery. Scenic design by Stephanie Osin Cohen. Costume design by Haydee Zelideth. Lighting design by Jason Lynch. Sound design by Paul James Predergast. Projection design by Mark Holthusen. Stage Management by Jason Waddell. Assistant Stage Management by Kevin Jinghong Zhu. Assistant Direction by Alexis K. Woodard. Photo by Jeremy Daniel.
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