Mask Workshop - Nov 1997 with Samuel Avital

Report by Gregory Tobo

I found the discoveries I made during the mask workshop to be difficult to put into words. Nevertheless, here's a summary of my experience at the mask workshop.

My first experience with the neutral mask, was one of loss. I no longer had a mutable face by which I could express my emotions. As an actor, I had come to depend on my face to communicate. Now I could present only a blank unchanging visage.

If I was to express myself, I would have to express myself through my body--in particular, through my torso. Mimes, of course, also use their arms and legs to communicate, but I began to sense that my primary tool would be my torso (arms and legs could be added later to amplify--or contradict--whatever message my torso sent). The mask workshop provided an opportunity to discover the expressive capabilities of my spine. I struggled with feeling and expressing an emotion with my entire body--not just my face. Ultimately, I found myself taking the first steps in learning how to involve my entire body on stage.

But the mask is not only about depriving the performer of the use of his or her face. The mask is also a tool which can strengthen a performer's presence on stage. Truly, one of the most difficult aspect of being on stage is to perform while being watched, scrutinized, and judged. Even the simplest of tasks can become difficult when the performer begins to sense that he or she is being watched. The mask does much to alleviate this tension. When wearing a mask, it was as if the mask was serving as a surrogate for me on stage. It was the mask that was being watched, not me. I was protected by the mask. The mask provided a kind of shelter from the eyes of the audience. Behind the mask, I felt safe in my own private realm. The mask would assume the responsibility of being on stage, I had only to be the life force behind the mask. In a certain sense I felt liberated from the pressures of being watched, and free to perform fearlessly.

The most difficult lesson to articulate, is that this sense of freedom, of liberation, is not confined to mask work we conducted on the stage. At some fleeting moment during the mask workshop, I was jarred by the realization that just as the mask served as the physical vessel for me to animate, my body (the lump of skin I call "me") was merely the physical vessel for a "presence" which was seeking to express itself. And that this "presence" was a truer expression of "me" than this blob of flesh I had so often called "me." This lump of skin was not really me, it was just a mask through which the real "me" (this "presence") would express itself.

The same freedom which the neutral mask offered to me on stage, was available to me off stage. On stage, the audience could watch, scrutinize, criticize, and judge the performance of the mask, but I was sheltered from their gaze. I could give my life to the mask freely. Off stage, the world can watch, scrutinize, criticize, judge, but their gaze is directed towards another mask. I began to see that the lump of skin that they focus on, in not really me. It is only the mask which I inhabit. When the realization was made (that I am not the mask/body, but am instead, the "presence" which animates the mask), I began to see that the freedom experienced while working behind the neutral mask is available to me at all times, and that I could allow my life to freely express itself without fear.

"Tobo, Gregory D" <ToboGD@LOUISVILLE.STORTEK.COM>