“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
-Oscar Wilde

When I tell other artists that I prefer to use masks in theatre because of the safety they provide, those artists often scoff and launch into a diatribe designed to make me give up art entirely, because how dare I call myself an artist without being willing to exploit 100% of myself, without danger in my decision making, without risking my entire sense of humanity in order to create a “pure” performance. Apparently those artists speak in ridiculous run on sentences—have you experienced that as well? They just seem to go on and on, like I do. They forget the mask that I mentioned, they even forget that I’m a performer and not a person.  They just spit out these paradigms that they’ve been taught diligently by the private art institutions that their parents so willingly pay for. Safe art is boring, it’s limited, it gives way to little creativity. There is no other way to make art other than to sit on a table stark naked and shove yams up your ass. Right?

I’m here to challenge that notion, particularly as it applies to theatre and circus. I began mask technique at the ripe age of thirteen. It was a mystical world and I couldn’t understand why the masks were treated with such reverence. I was made to enter the studio alone and face over 30 masks. They had human features– a pair of eyes, a nose, a mouth of sorts—but the shapes, colors, profiles and contours of the faces were anything but familiar. And yet, as I met each mask, the reaction I had to each was as unique as meeting 30 different people for the first time. Some seemed to dominate me, others to cajole me, others to make me chuckle or be filled with rage. I’d pick them up hold them level with my face, their blank eyes staring at me. This is the mask in itself.   

Once early humans figured out how to waste less time securing food and shelter, they began to use that extra time to tell stories about how they secured those needs. The skin of a bear was worn over the shoulders, feathers were used for adornment, in some parts of the country a man was crowned with the head of his enemy predator. These were the earliest masks, coverings that man used to shed his own nature and take on another. Man felt an unforgiving need to not only to share his stories, but to take on other character’s roles as well. The second crucial part of mask technique is the actor himself, the man with the urge to tell a story

The third, final, and most subjective part of mask technique is the character. Once I had found my mask to use for the remainder of that class, we set in and spent every Friday afternoon unearthing a character from that mask. Though a series of exercises that encouraged us to “imagine as if it were so”, we began not to decide on a character but instead uncover it. Many of these exercises were physically and emotionally brutal. They were designed to wear us down to a point where we could no longer project our preconceived notions onto the mask, but instead the mask and the actor came together organically and a character suddenly existed. I struggled in this class. My love of making pretty shapes with my body and creating “the best” characters held me back at first, and it wasn’t until one particular grueling exercise in which the narrator of the class led us through a series of frightening psychological exercises (You’re in an underground cave being chased by an unknown evil monster, you can hear it coming behind you and you must crawl forward, the cave is getting smaller, the monster is getting closer… so on and so forth) that I relinquished control to my mask and ended up with a pure and delightful character that I created freely. Physically wearing the mask meant that no one could see the tears streaming down my face or the terror in my eyes as I crawled through the tunnel. All they saw was my mask and my body, my most beloved instrument, “performing” in such a manner that was captivating and present. The mask is the catalyst by which the actor frees himself into a character. The mask is a Rorschach onto which the audience (not the actor) projects the emotions and story that the body is conveying.  Once the actor submits to this, he is free to exist honestly in whatever world that has been created around him. That is the goal in acting, isn’t it?

Masking has certainly developed over time. Early Greek theatre used exaggerated masks to project emotion all the way to the nosebleed section of Epidaurus. In the 16^th century the Italians grasped onto the idea, utilizing stock character masks to play out often-improvised scenes and scenarios in Commedia dell’arte. Japanese Noh theatre used intricate masks seemed to change emotion simply by tilting the head. Neutral masking techniques (those plain white masks that are freaky as hell) are often used for movement studies in theatre schools. I would even go so far as to posit that a clown’s nose is just a very small mask that has the same psychological properties as a full or half mask. In cirque we see characters with painted faces, yet another form of masking that aids a performer in honest transformation. Last week I performed my comedic contortion piece for my class. Lately I’ve developed an every day air of understated gracefulness (or so I hope), so I’m sure it surprised my classmates to see me openly acting as an amorous, outlandish French man with a penchant for curvy women. To be honest, it surprised me as well! I gave myself over to that character with such fervor I almost though myself amazing, until I looked closer and realized that all I had really done was use this technique in a minimal way. I created a resting facial positing for him that in no way resembled my own, and I would always return to this position after expressing emotions of any sort. This became my mask, and as a result of that wee bit of safety I was suddenly able to perform with an electricity that I haven’t seen out of myself in a long, long time. Moments happened that weren’t rehearsed or contrived, they were happening to “mon croque monsieur” (translation: my ham sandwich, a fitting name) and he was responding to them organically. That performance inspired me to look back on my mask training and start to understand how it can serve me as a budding circus artist. I do not intend to rehash what has already been done: instead I wish to continue pushing the boundaries that the New American circus movement created for me not too long ago.

Coming back to where we started (remember the precocious artist with the run-on sentences?), I’ll conclude what I always conclude: I’m right and they’re terribly misguided. By giving a man a mask, you are giving him a means to create and show a truth that is far deeper than anything he could accomplish by himself, with his own hang-ups and vulnerabilities.  I would even venture to say that by using this thin guideline of safety we can drive our performances further into that beautiful, dangerous place that is good theatre… and then we can come out the other side without the neurosis that so often afflicts unprotected actors.

Stay tuned for a gut-busting story about a situation my love of masks got me into one day. It includes helicopters and M-16’s, and you should read it.

All opinions expressed are my own and have been shaped by my mentors in the art.