Peterborough Storytellers: Tales and Tips: 2013

By Rita Grimaldi

‘The Bird Who Spoke Three Times’ is a Ruth Sawyer’s story chosen by Rita to tell and perform in mask on September 23, 2013 in Peterborough, Ontario. In this lengthy series of log entries and photographs, Rita records her creative journey over the space of fifty days. It is a unique record of a master teller and mask performer preparing to share the Black Bird story with an audience.

Introduction: Both mask and storytelling are important arts for me. In this series of writings, I have decided to document how my thinking and creating come together to culminate in the creation of the Black Bird mask and costume, the shaping of the story text and how I gradually take on the physicality of the mask itself.

Day 1 – My Decision To Make The Mask

Today I began to prepare to tell a new mask story. There are fifty days until the telling day. I have found the story. It is the story of ‘The Bird Who Spoke Three Times’ from Ruth Sawyer’s book ‘The Way of the Storyteller’.

This story is a frame story – that is, a story that has a second story within it. A bird tells the inside story. I wanted to use a bird mask to allow the bird to speak the story for itself. So I went to my studio to look at my three existing bird masks. None of them were the bird in the story. I can’t tell you how I know this but I do. In my studio, I found a small black figure of a bird. It had a simple round head and a long yellow beak. This was the bird I wanted. I decided to make a new mask in this form.

Then with the image of the not-yet-made mask in my mind, I read the bird’s part of the story. A voice comes to me. Not my own voice but another voice. I continue to read, translating into the first person – I become the bird. I experiment with using the present tense. This feels right. I experiment with adding emotion. This feels right too.

Tomorrow I will buy plasticine and begin to shape the bird’s face over a plaster mold of my face. I will give the bird a mouth that opens and closes so that it can speak the story. I will hold its image in my mind until it can flow out of my hands and become a real bird face.

I am excited. I am feeling the enjoyment of a new story transforming me into a different being. So fine! Yes it is – so fine.

Above - Plaster model of Rita’s face with a black bird figure

Day 4 - Beginning To Sculpt The Black Bird Face

First, I looked for pictures of real birds. I found a set of Raven photographs. The beak of the raven is close to the shape I want. After softening the plasticine by rolling it and warming it with my hands, I started to press the plasticine onto the plaster mold of my face. I need to make my human oval face into the more circular form of a bird face. I need to make my human nose into the lengthened break of a bird. My eyes must remain aligned with the bird eyes so I can see when wearing the mask. My mouth must remain aligned to the bird’s mouth so that the bird’s beak will open and close as it speaks the story.

One hour later.

I have now completed the circle of plasticine that will form the outer edge of the bird’s face (see the image below). I begin to think about the bird in the story. In the persona of the bird, I begin to think about how it is that I keep the young woman in the story safe. Still in the character of the bird, I think about how I enable her to escape from the Moor. I consider that for me, the bird is a symbol of the soul.

Above – Completed first stage of sculpting with raven reference picture

Day 6 – Who Will Help the Black Bird Mask Tell the Story?

Sometimes in the night I wake up and begin to think about art. At 4am last night I asked myself, ‘Who will help the Black Bird to tell the story?’

Originally I envisioned myself telling the story up to the part where the bird speaks and tells the story to the young woman. But in the night, I begin to think about a second mask telling the parts of the story not told by the black bird. I often tell one story using several masks.

So that you will better understand the mask options that I have, here is a story summary.

The story of ‘The Bird Who Spoke Three Times’ begins with a Spanish soldier going off to war and leaving his young Spanish wife. He tells her not to leave the house because there is a risk that Moors could kidnap her. She agrees and as he leaves he gives her a bird to keep her company.

Passing by on the street, a Moor sees her on the balcony and devises a plan to kidnap her. He disguises himself like a Spaniard and goes to an old woman, telling her that he will give her a purse of gold if she entices the young woman out of the house. The old woman tries three times to do this and almost succeeds. But each time, the bird tells a story and the young woman stays to listen to the story that the bird tells.

So here are the other characters that might tell the above part of the story in mask: the young soldier, the Moor, the old woman and the young woman. I eliminated the young soldier as he is absent for most of the story. This leaves three characters: the Moor, the old woman and the young woman. I think of three masks in my studio that might play these characters.

Above: The Male mask, the Old Woman mask and the Young Woman mask

Lying in my bed in the dark of night, I see the Old Woman mask and hear the voice she might use to tell the above part of the story. But she is not the initiator of the action, so I eliminate her. I consider the Moor. But he is wicked and deceitful and I don’t like him having a place as the second mask opposite the Black Bird. This leaves the Young Woman or my first idea - me as the storyteller opposite the Black Bird mask segment.

Then I have a new idea!

I could be the storyteller at the beginning and then just before the Black Bird tells its story, an audience member could come up, put on the Young Woman mask and then sit to listen to the Bird’s story. I envision the Bird perched on a high stool, the audience member in the Young Woman mask, sitting lower on a chair beside, looking up at the Bird. This person in the Young Woman mask will represent all the listeners in the audience.

I like this idea. I cannot say yet that I will choose it I until the Bird mask is complete and I rehearse in mask. But it is a new idea full of potential.

After all this thinking I am too excited to sleep, so I get up and make myself oatmeal for breakfast.

Day 7 – In And Out Of Mask: The Geography Of Reality

‘The Bird Who Spoke Three Times’ is a frame story. In the old stories, a frame story is one that contains two realities - the reality of the real world and the reality of the magic world. A common example of this kind of two-reality story is the story of Rip Van Winkle. Rip van Winkle has his ordinary life and then he enters the realm of the fairies. When he returns to his ordinary life, one hundred years have passed. The rules are different in the magic world of the fairies.

Going into mask is like entering the magic world. The rules are different. You are not the same person in the mask world.

For example, here I am in the Bone Dwarf mask, telling an Inuit windigo story.

When I am wearing the Bone Dwarf mask, I am a different person. I have a different voice. I have a different history. I belong to a different people.

When I take the mask off, I am once again my normal self in my everyday reality.

Wearing the Black Bird mask will have this changing effect on me. And because ‘The Story of The Bird Who Spoke Three Times’ is a frame story, a second layer of change will be added.

As a frame story, the Black Bird story contains two separate parts - an inner and an outer story. Two realities. These two realities are different. In the first reality, there is regular life (the soldier is going to war and leaving his young wife). As a storyteller, I will sit before the audience and tell this part of the story in my normal physical posture and with my normal facial expressions.

The second, inner story will be told by the Bird (that is, me transformed into the Bird by the mask). This inner story contains another reality - a magic reality in which there is a Singing Fish, the destruction of an enemy made of smoke, a King and his son.

Becoming the Black Bird in the performing of this story allows me not only to change who I am but to change where I belong. I can belong to the magic reality of the inner story. So wearing the Black Bird mask to tell the inner magic story allows me to doubly enter the changed reality – once as the story changes to its inner story and again as I change physically by using the mask.

The doorway between the real and the magic worlds will be crossed twice. In the telling, I will have twice stepped between here and someplace else.

Day 10 – The Courtship Of The Black Bird Mask

The curator of this Tales and Tips blog, asked me if I might remember to include into my log notes, the emotions that I am feeling toward the mask. I replied that emotion was not yet part of the process. The beginning of the process has only involved being in the zone of creating the physical mask.

Emotion will come later. It would be part of the performance stage.

Now tonight, having completed the first stage of sculpting the Black Bird face, I am thinking further on the topic of my feeling toward this mask. For me, it is as if I am just getting to know it. When it is complete – the rice paper shell, the painting and the decoration – then I will know it well enough to respond to it with emotion.

Masks are kind of like people. Some people you like and want to engage with (my Coyote and Bear masks are like this for me). Some people you don’t like and you are reluctant to be involved with (my Fierce Rose mask and the Duppy mask are like this for me). And some people remain just acquaintances and you don’t know very well. Those masks that I have made but have not yet found a story to tell with them are like this for me.

The Black Bird mask is being designed for a specific story. The story resonates with me and I anticipate deep feeling coming through me when I am in the mask telling this story. These feelings will become embedded in the mask itself.

For now, the mask and I are in a courtship phase. As its face forms, I am responding.

Day 8 – Sculpting The Black Bird Mask

As I smooth the plasticine over the plaster mold of my face, I search for the feeling of the Black Bird. Shape follows feeling. The lower part of the beak must fit exactly over my lower lip. See in the photo how the brown plasticine follows the indent between the two lips of my plaster face.

Above: The first phase of forming the beak

I keep one eye on my raven photos to emulate the raven beak. After an hour, I decide that it is essential to go away and come back so that I will see the sculpture with fresh eyes. So I go and have my lunch.

After lunch, I work on the upper beak. The line of the beak is beginning to take shape. I use a large knife to pare off the top of the head to strengthen the illusion of a flat bird head and to strengthen the feeling of the beak arising from the top of the head.

Then I take the wide handle of the paintbrush and make eyeholes down to the plaster face. I know the pupils of my eyes will be exactly where these holes are when the mask is done. I am always aware of my need to see out of the mask and to speak with the mask on.

One of the distinctive features of my storytelling in animal mask is that many of my masks have a movable jaw. This jaw enables the mask mouth to open and close as I speak. This fascinates audiences as they can’t figure out how it happens. As a storyteller, the mask having a movable mouth transforms the mask into a real, speaking creature - a creature who speaks by opening and closing its mouth.

Now I work on sculpting the Bird’s lower jaw so that it can hinge open as I speak.

The first step is to shave off plasticine to make the lower jaw a separate unit. I do this and then I stop for a while.

Off and on through the afternoon I work on the sculpture. I experiment with adding bone detail above the eyes and high on the cheeks. I am looking for a certain expression – the expression I think the Black Bird in the story would have.

With my knife, I begin to narrow the lower cheeks so that the Bird’s energy from below the eyes goes into the beak. Gradually the expression is taking shape. Now I bring the line of the beak straight up to the top of the head. I stop here. It is 4pm.

Off and on through the evening, I return to my studio to look at the Black Bird’s face. At one point I also examine two of my other bird masks. Looking at them, I decide I want Black Bird’s eyes to come forward more than the eyes of these other two birds. So I place circles of plasticine inside the eyeholes. This is right! I also add a tongue to the lower beak and I strengthen the nostrils in the beak with ovals made of plasticine.

Now the face has power. It has come into the wild innocence of a bird. I am pleased. Day 8 has gone well.

Day 11 – The Black Bird Mask Takes Over Telling the Whole Story

Now that the initial sculpting of the mask is complete, I begin to think of preparing the text of the story. I go to the book and read Ruth Sawyer’s story again. A thought comes to my mind.

The bird in the story is a magical bird who can speak. What if I wrote a pre-story for the Black Bird to tell how he acquired the ability to speak? This pre-story would establish the bird as a sentient creature and enable him to enter the story before he is given to the soldier’s wife.

With this early entrance, the Black Bird could speak the whole text of the story. This would be far more powerful than me taking off the mask and putting it on again each time the Bird speaks. But I will keep the audience listener in the mask of the Young Woman and tell the whole story in mask as the Black Bird.

The whole story is now really three stories:

§ the frame story of how the bird came to speak,
§ the frame story of the soldier and his young wife,
§ and the inner story of the singing fish.

I am pleased to tell all three stories in mask as the Black Bird. Excellent! I will write the story out in this way.

Day 12 – Rewriting The Story In The Voice Of The Black Bird Mask

I experiment with several options for explaining how the bird came to be able to speak in words. But I settle on a simple, one-paragraph statement by the Bird. He says, ‘Somewhere, long in my past, I learned to speak the sound of words. And now I can tell you how I saved a young woman with my ability to speak and tell her a story’.

This is good because it does two things. First, it establishes that the bird can speak and therefore can tell the whole story. Second, it introduces the content of the tale of a young woman who is saved by the Bird’s storytelling.

Having finished this introduction, I can now go on to the rest of the process of writing the story. Here are the rules I follow in preparing a story for telling.

§ Any word or phrase that is awkward for me to say, I leave out or change.
§ The story must make sense. The prime rule of storytelling is what goes around comes around.

This second rule is not clearly followed at the end of the inner story. In the original story, a Moor Wizard turns the prince into a fish. But the story does not explain how the prince regains his human form or why he was turned into a fish in the first place.

When I find inconsistencies such as this, my first desire is to find older versions of the story that may be more complete. I search the Internet and the library but can find no other versions of ‘The Bird Who Spoke Three Times’. I am uncomfortable leaving the audience with these loose ends. So my only other option is to construct a more complete version of this part of the story by writing it myself. So that is what I will attempt to do.

It takes me three hours to write my version of the story. It is twenty pages, double-spaced and hand written. That means it will take twenty minutes to tell. The Bird will tell the entire story – the two frame parts will be told in the first person as the Bird’s direct experience – the inner story will be told in the third person with the Bird as a storyteller.

I am satisfied with my text. And how the Black Bird mask has taken over the whole task of telling the story.

Day 13 - The Dynamics Of The Black Bird Mask Story Influence My Other Storytelling

A friend asks me if I will perform the story of ‘The Bird Who Spoke Three Times’ at her house party.

At first I think that this would be an opportunity to have a kind of a dress rehearsal of the mask’s performance and of the dynamics of the audience member in mask playing opposite to me in mask that I had thought about earlier. However, I reject the rehearsal idea because I do not want to interfere with the writing of this log toward one end – the performance on September 18th.

This morning I had another idea. I could tell a different mask story at her event. I could tell the story of Granny Shelock. This is a story of an old woman made young again by the fairies. I have done this story many times wearing a wooden mask I carved in Bali. Because I own three other wooden Bali masks, I could try out the dynamics of the masked audience listeners by using these masks for three audience members. This is an exciting idea.

I have a vision in my mind of these three Bali masks - a man, a frog and a woman - sitting to my side on an angle, half facing me and half facing the audience. They appear to be listening intently to the story. This is an extraordinary vision. It is like a performance company of masks. I am grateful to the Black Bird mask for drawing this idea out of me.

The process will be as follows:

Offer the masks to the audience, explaining their role as listeners to the story.

Volunteers will come up one at a time and choose a mask, put it on and look into a mirror at their transformed face.

They will then sit in one of three available wooden chairs just off to my right side.

As they listen, they will do what normal listeners do - sometimes looking at me, sometimes looking down and occasionally looking at the audience.

At the end of the story, all four of us (the masked audience and me) will take off our masks and bow.

I have never had a company of performing masks. This will be most enjoyable.

Day 15 – The Birth Of The Black Bird Mask

Over the past two days, I have put two layers of rice paper over the plasticine sculpture of the Bird’s face. I have applied the rice paper a small piece at a time, using a brush full of diluted white glue. Each layer was allowed to dry thoroughly.

This morning, I put on a Cirque de Soleil cd and began to remove the rice paper shell that will form the mask from the plasticine sculpture of the Black Bird.

Surprisingly, the jaw area released easily at the first pull. But a big part of the face did not release easily. I had to slit it along the upper beak and at the top of the head. Doing this, I was very aware of damaging the shell. Finally it released.

Above: The shell of the Black Bird mask separated from its plasticine base. The clothes pegs hold the wire frame in place while the rice paper and glue which attach it to the mask dries.

Now I put a third layer of rice paper inside and repair the slits and strengthen weak areas. By 4:30, I have completed the third layer and put in the inner wire that will support the mask’s shape and its ties. Then I remember that I wanted the mask to be narrow below the eyes. The wire allows me to bend the shell back into this shape. I take a paintbrush handle and make a hole in the centre of each pupil of the eyes.

Two of the four processes are now complete - the sculpting and the making of the rice paper shell. Two still remain - the painting and decorating of the shell. I prop the mask up on my worktable. I see a blank white face staring at me. I consider colours for it. Designs for it.

I have some trepidation about how to proceed.

Day 19 – The Age Of The Black Bird Mask

This morning I consider the Black Bird mask as if it were in the infancy of its life. I think of it in relation to my oldest mask – the Coyote mask. The Coyote mask is my first major storytelling mask.

I made the Coyote mask in 1989. But I don’t measure the Coyote mask’s age by the number of years since I made it. Rather, I measure its age by how much storytelling experience it has had. Coyote and I have told stories forty one times together. We have told to children and adult audiences. We have told outside at festivals and inside at auditorium events. We have also told in schools and in houses.

All these kinds of storytelling experiences have become part of the Coyote mask and embedded in our experience together. In fact, the sixteenth time I told what I consider one of my signature stories in this mask – the story in which Coyote brings a girl back to life - a fellow storyteller came to me after and said, ‘You should always tell in mask’. This was not a tribute to me but to the maturity of my relationship to the Coyote mask and the storytelling maturity of the mask itself.

Above: Rita telling a Coyote story in mask at the Peterborough Folk Festival

What I am saying here is that just like humans, masks mature with experience and that my masks gain experience through storytelling.

The Black Bird mask is in its infancy. It is lucky that it has a story waiting for it to tell. It does not have to wait on my studio wall for years and years, having no story to tell. A powerful first experience awaits it on the road to maturity.

Day 19 – Colour Descends On The Black Bird Mask

Now the shell is ready for painting. It has two layers of rice paper and a supporting wire inside held in place with a third layer of rice paper. I begin by sealing the shell with Gesso. Then I choose a colour pallet containing warm and cool colours of red and blue to mix with the black paint.

All afternoon I paint. There are not only colours in my mind but shapes. I have been studying a book on Haida masks and I would like the clear shapes that cover these masks to be on the face of the Black Bird.

The shapes pour out of my hands unbidden. White to circle the eyes. Soft grey for the beak. Blue black rising up from the jaw line. The shapes on the face are powerful - almost too strong. I try softening them by graying the white under the eyes.

But a problem arises with the speaking, moveable jaw of the Black Bird mask.

When I take the jaw to paint it, I realize that it is too long to be workable. I should not have made it to go under my chin. It should have ended in the crease between my chin and my lower lip. So I go back to the plasticine sculpture and create a new jaw out of plasticine. Then I begin the process of layers of rice paper and adding the wire again.

Above: The first painting of the Black Bird Mask with its new lower beak

Day 20 - Matching The Inner Feeling To The Outer Mask

Three feelings must be in sync.

§ The feeling of the mask’s face
§ The feeling of myself with the mask’s face and
§ The feeling of the story

I can have a range of different ways to achieve this but that range is not infinite.

I can be dynamic and full of desire as I am in my Goat mask when I want to eat from the farmer’s garden.

I can be determined and powerful as I am when I am in my Bear Woman’s mask and I set out to avenge the death of my husband Coyote.

I can be soft and curious and a little frightened as I am in the Curious Girl mask.

So there is a big range of who I can be. Looking again at the painted Black Bird mask, I try to find its feeling and see if I can be who it is.

Looking at it, I am unsure of whether or not it is finished and whether or not I yet know who it is.

Day 21 to Day 29 – The Evolving Changes To The Black Bird Mask

Over ten days I make changes to the Black Bird mask.

I adjust the eyebrow height
I extend the sides of the jaw line
I make a new more functional jaw
I decorate with feathers, flowers and pieces of wood and pinecone

Still, I do not yet know this mask. Two days ago on Day 29, I woke up thinking I needed a radical change. The performance is in 23 days. So I do the unexpected.

I go back to the plasticine sculpture of the Black Bird still on the mold of my plaster face and modify it into a new Bird mask. Here is my thinking on why this was necessary.

Day 30 to Day 32 – One Mask Becomes Two

Over three days, I re-sculpt the plasticine mold of the Black Bird mask, put on the rice paper and paint the second Bird mask. I consciously decide to make this second mask a smaller and more innocent being. I use the female King Fisher bird as my model and I form the small feather crown of the King Fisher at the top of the mask’s head.

Above: The Black Bird mask with the Small Bird made on its modified plasticine sculpture.

The female mask is my new choice to play Dona Rosita.

I am feeling like many of the fairy tale heroines that find a place in their journey when they are lost in the woods. The new mask - the King Fisher mask - is full of innocence and gentleness. The Black Bird mask is full of power and myth.

The question is: Which mask is right for telling the story of ‘The Bird Who Spoke Three Times’? Which bird can be the best protector and friend to Dona Rosita?

Sometimes we are protected by innocence allied to courage.

And sometimes we are protected by maturity allied to strength.

I have to find my way out of this forest by one of these sets of characteristics.

I realize that I have come to the end of Day 32 without resolving some major problems. Please bear with me as I find my way out of the forest!

Day 33 – Continuing My Work On The Black Bird Mask

Even while painting the King Fisher mask, I have continued to work on the Black Bird mask.

I decide that the white shapes around the eyes were a distraction. So I remove them, leaving only white eye circles. I re-paint most of the beak grey so that the face becomes dominantly black. And then I add long feathers, tied like hair, with spotted feathers in the tied bundle. I liked these very much. I get the lower beak to function but then decide I don’t want it, so I set it aside for a while.

Day 33 – The Black Bird Mask Takes Back The Story

The question is why did I stop and make the King Fisher mask? Here is the answer.

Sometimes in life there is a craving for innocence.

You will know the story of Hansel and Gretel and you will remember how Hansel, in his innocence, made a trail of breadcrumbs as a path to find his way home. He does not consider the hard truth that the breadcrumbs will be eaten by the birds and are not a permanent solution.

Lost in the forest of problems with the Black Bird mask (getting the colours right, problem solving the lower jaw, looking for costume colours), I sought a way out. And I intuitively realized that I could get out of these difficulties by just starting again and making a simpler, more innocent face.

Sure enough, innocence rolls off the King Fisher face. Its soft shape was easy to paint in sky blue colours. Its mouth worked perfectly. Putting on the mask, the lower jaw followed my lips without effort. Its innocent, wild face spoke to me of happy times.

Above: The King Fisher mask

The King Fisher mask has a story waiting for it but ‘The Bird Who Spoke Three Times’ is not that story.

‘The Bird Who Spoke Three Times’ must think and plan a way to defeat a wicked adversary not only in the magic world of the inner story it creates but also in the real world where the wicked Moor seeks to kidnap Dona Rosita.

The bird in the story needs the strength and maturity of the Black Bird mask. I cannot escape into the innocence of the King Fisher mask.

So I return to the Black Bird mask and will begin to rehearse the story that belonged to it all along.

Above: The Black Bird mask

I have now found my way out of the forest. I am on my way to the journey’s end of the performance. But there is one more surprise coming.

Day 38 - The Five Senses Of The Mask Maker

As a mask maker and storyteller my senses are involved in a cumulative way.

First, comes Sight

I see some vision of the mask in my mind. This vision is not clear. In the beginning it is without detail. I think, ‘I will make a Black Bird mask. It will have a long narrow beak and it will be black’.

Second, Touch is added to Sight

I begin to feel the plasticine as I mould it over the plaster mold of my face. I feel if the curves are round without flat areas. I feel if the shapes are thick enough to hold together. Sight checks feel.

Within a few days, I begin to make drawings of the costume and mask together. This exercise places the mask into the larger context of seeing the whole body from a distance. It allows me to imagine how I might appear in the final look of performance.

What I realize this morning is that until the mask is finished I am restricted to two senses –

§ Touch to shape and

§ Sight to see and direct the shape forming.

Colour and Sight

The Black Bird mask has been so challenging because of how we see and react to the colour black. In western culture, black has certain connotations: death, sinister intention, even evil.

Visually, I have been very aware of the colour and the need to produce a black face that was a positive, powerful force that could be an ally to both the girl in the story and to the audience.

Visually, the under-colours of red and blue were used in order to be seen through the black. The blue eyes read the colour of the sky and soften the face. The feathers were chosen purposely not to be all black. I particularly like the spotted feathers at the eye corners and in the hair bundles.

Visually, I am satisfied in forming an alliance with the mask’s colours. It has been a long road but I am pleased with the visual outcome.

Third, Sound is added to Touch and Sight

Now that the mask is done, I am learning the story while speaking it aloud. Today I am three-quarters done this task.

Surprisingly, the text is coming out of my mouth in a specific cadence with a medium pitch and very clear articulation. I am going to do separate voices for the other characters in the story. To do five different characters is new to me so it will take time. But I want to do it.

Fourth, Feeling and Movement are added to Touch, Sight and Sound

I am not there yet. First, I need to master the text. This is the last sense to be added.

Day 42 – The Mirror: How An Audience Sees The Masked Storyteller

After committing the story to memory, the next step in the process toward performance is telling the story in mask and in costume in front of a full-length mirror. The mirror is my first audience. It begins to inform me as to what the audience will see when I perform in mask.

Thinking about what the audience sees, I consider a film I saw in one of my university Greek courses. It was a film of Sophocles’ play ‘Electra’. It was done in the traditional manner of ancient Greek theatre – in mask and ancient Greek clothing. The masks where full face without a lot of detail.

The image of the main character Clytemnestra sets clearly in my mind. In her simple mask and long Greek white dress, she expressed extreme emotion over the death of her daughter. Her arms, her posture, her voice all had so much power in them. The mask was embedded in her body and voice. The three units – mask, body and voice were partners in showing the power of the story content.

That is a goal for me in the telling of ‘The Black Bird Who Spoke Three Times’. To have such power of performance: to have such oneness between mask, body, voice and story that the audience will marvel at the experience of an altered reality.

How fine it would be if I could achieve this goal.

Day 45 – I Begin To Decide What Form The Black Bird Mask Will Take

Two days from now, in a house concert venue that I mentioned earlier, I will perform the story of Granny Shelock in the Old Woman mask I carved in Bali. I have told this story twelve times before. After reviewing the text, I put on the Old Woman mask and go before the big, full length mirror to rehearse.

The mask is so known to me. It is like a friend. The story – the only one that this mask has ever told - is like a friend. It is embedded in the mask’s experience. I tell the whole story while in mask in front of the mirror. I enjoy it. There is a rhythm of in and out of problems within the tale and a final ending in happiness.

Then I put on the Black Bird mask. The mask headpiece is on and under it the lower beak is attached. I go through four pages of the story in front of the mirror. I cannot feel the story. I take off the mask and I remove the lower beak.

The Bali mask /Granny Shelock is a three-quarter mask. My own mouth is visible. I really want the Black Bird mask to be a three-quarter mask too.

Above: The Black Bird mask as a three-quarter mask.

I put the Black Bird mask back on – now without the lower beak - and re-enter the story.

This time, I go right though the story. The Black Bird mask in this form OWNS the story. It seeks it out of its own experience and its own life. I am pleased. Art has to choose its own form.

For this story, the Black Bird must be a three-quarter mask. My own mouth must be a visible partner to my covered face.

Day 48 – Performance With A Masked Audience

Last night, I performed Granny Shelock in mask before a small audience. I followed through on the idea I developed to have some members of the audience in mask on stage beside me as listeners to the story.

I cannot explain to you the pleasure it gave me to turn and see other masked faces. It was as if my masked self was not alone. She had a community of others like her – listening to her story and watching how she moved.

Above: The telling of the story of Granny Shelock in mask with a mask audience listening.

In the Black Bird performance, I am looking forward to having a member of the audience in mask as Dona Rosita. She will have the role of listening to the Black Bird’s story. I anticipate the pleasure of seeing another masked face as I look out of the Black Bird’s eyes.

There are now three days left until performance day. My task is now to refine my telling through the process of the mirror as audience. Certain movements are developing during the my mirror work as are certain changes in my voice’s emotion and volume.

The performance awaits. I am ready.

Day 51 – Performance Day

Fifty days after beginning this log, I performed my adaptation of the story of ‘The Bird Who Spoke Three Times’ for an audience of twenty-one people. Below is my personal experience of that performance.

Day 52 – The Experience Of Performing In The Black Bird Mask

Seeing Through The Eyes Of The Black Bird Mask

Complex images come to me from the performance. Usually when I perform in mask the dominant images are of faces in the audience during the performance. Last night, telling the story of ‘The Bird Who Spoke Three Times’, here are some of the audience facial expressions I saw.

One person listening with eyes closed. Another smiling with enjoyment. Yet another person with concern in her eyes. But the dominant image that remains with me one day later is the Black Bird mask seeing Dona Rosita in mask and saying to her ‘Listen Dona Rosita ….’, ‘You remember …’. The image of her masked self, listening to my masked self, is powerful to me. Telling the story to her became equal to telling the story to the audience.

Hearing The Black Bird Mask’s Words

This mask’s voice is clear and expressive. It is an intelligent and articulate creature. I felt its intelligence and its bond with the story. Listening to the Black Bird’s words during the mirror rehearsals, I became aware of changes in the wording of the story’s text. Here is an example of how descriptions of the Moor’s intent changed over time while speaking in mask.

§ My original writing of the story says ’He was handsome but wicked. Seeing my Dona Rosita, he fell in love with her…’
§ In mask rehearsal, this changed to, ‘The Moor had an evil intent …’
§ And during the performance, it changed again to ‘When the Moor looked at Dona Rosita he had lust in his eyes.’

It was as if the Black Bird mask was a thinking person, finding the words not from my memory (which is the way story content is usually spoken from both in and out of mask) but from its natural desire to pair experience with language in order to best communicate the story to the audience.

After the telling, I observed that this is the first of my masks that has ever given me this substitution of language experience. Usually, I speak the text of the story almost as written. Unexpectedly, this mask seems to promote thinking in language to produce its own words.

Character Voices

I assigned several voice qualities according to the character. For example, Don Elalio spoke in a deep male voice with a slight accent. The male voices were easier for me to produce than the female. I ran only about 50% in consistency with the Woman Servant and the Sad Faced Woman. This will improve with further telling.

Cadence And Emotion In Sound

Certain voice emotions were important to achieve right from the beginning of rehearsal.

§ The bird crying out with plaintive desperation in its voice, ‘Dona Rosita don’t go!’
§ Marianna speaking in fear of the Moor smoke figure.
§ The song in its low rhythmic cadence.

These rhythms and emotions were pleasing to me. Here is an example of the cadence of the language when the Prince is cured of his madness and looks at Mariana (the underlined words are the ones given emphasis).

§ He was looking at her with love in his eyes.

Movement and Stance

This Mask has big arm movements. These movements express qualities of emotion, physical direction and symbolic meaning.

Above: Arm movements of the Black Bird mask

An example of the arm movements having symbolic meaning is the two hands held together to symbolize holding the bag of gold promised to the old Woman Servant by the Moor.

In mask, movement is always restricted due to the limited vision provided by the small eyeholes. There is no peripheral vision. So walking is difficult. During the performance, I did stand and sit and rotate my head and body to see all members of the audience.

I was aware of this mask needing to have an erect sitting and standing posture. The face of the Black Bird mask required this posture. It is not my normal stance. I am interested to see the video so that I can look at how well I carried out the erect stance.

Day 52 – The Story Intention And The Black Bird Mask

Two hours before the performance, I sat on the couch at home and thought about the transition into the story. When working in mask, I often play instruments and say in-between the music, two or three sentences that bring the audience out of ordinary reality and into the story reality.

At my morning rehearsal, I had been trying out different sentences to accompany the drum but it was not the right sound. So I chose a little Zither to play a few notes on. Now, in my last preparation session, I again went over my sentences. I realized that the ones I had written were too specific to the story. I decided to re-write more general, mythic statements. Here they are:

§ Let us go to the old times.
§ When birds could speak in words.
§ When birds could be companions and protectors to human beings.

This is what happened in the story of ‘The Bird Who Spoke Three Times’. After this short introduction, I will put on the Black Bird mask and tell the story.

The importance of this introductory series of sentences is that they introduce for the audience, both the intent of the story and the mask character telling the story.

Here is part of a precious audience feedback statement written after the story performance.

‘The Black Bird is very powerful but his care for Dona Rosita also came through. In fact, so many other aspects of the bird came through to me – its concern for her welfare, and even its pride for the service it gave in keeping her safe and for its cleverness.’

Above: The Black Bird and Dona Rosita sharing the story

I am so amazed that in the story performance I achieved the exact care and relationship I set out in my introductory sentences. I wanted to convey to my audience that the care comes from a mythic, magical, supernatural source which does exist and that this care is encapsulated in the relationship between the Black Bird and Dona Rosita. The feedback quoted above recognizes that a ‘powerful’ speaking bird gave such care in the story.

How fine! How fine for me, while in the form of the Black Bird mask, to be the emissary of such a message of supernatural care! I stand on the shoulders of all the ancient mask wearers in bringing this message. The shoulders of…

the Greeks wearing masks of their Gods,
the Hopi wearing masks of the Kachinas, and
the Haida wearing masks of Raven

How fine! I can almost feel the feathers of the Black Bird growing out of my skin. I can almost feel my feet leave the ground and fly to the sun.

Day 52 – Summing Up The Journey Of Making The Log Of The Black Bird Mask

This has been a long eight-week journey. It has had its beginning, its lost-in- the-forest time and its completion-of-task time.

Earlier I wrote that a mask’s age has to do with the experience it has gained through storytelling. Now, at the end of this journey, I see that the log itself is a form of storytelling. It was telling the story of the birth pains and growth pleasures of the Black Bird mask itself.

The experiences recorded in the log have become embedded in the face of the Black Bird mask. The mask already has a depth that would not normally be in a new mask. This depth comes out of the experience of my writing the log which in turn pushed my artistic self towards the constant evolution of the mask.

The last four weeks have been a continuous seeking of a certain visual appearance on the mask’s face. I painted and repainted layer upon layer of colour on the face. I added and took away all manner of feathers and objects of decoration around the face. I evolved the costume through countless options of blouses and pants and head coverings.

Writing the log impelled me to push myself far beyond what I would normally have experienced. All the emotion I went through in painting, decoration and costume design are embedded in the mask’s face.

These emotions will always be there.

They will never leave.

They are like the bag of gold in the story – except I have worked for this gold and now it is mine.

What will be the future of the Black Bird mask?

The Black Bird Mask will tell other stories. I will find them. Yes I will.

Here are the final words I wrote for the performance of ‘The Bird Who Spoke Three Times’. The Black Bird mask says:

“As to whether or not I ever spoke again that is a story for another time.”

Above: Rita in The Black Bird mask sitting outside her house

A Postscript…

Thank you for accompanying me on this journey.

Here are some comments from some of those who saw the first performance of the Black Bird Mask.

‘The story was very engaging and the mask was so detailed I could really believe in the character. Barely noticed the person behind the mask.’

§ ‘I liked the description of the interior scenes. It helped me to imagine the setting and context of the story – it was a whole other world in a different time and place – very captivating.’ Joanne Culley

§ ‘Loved the funny scary (story).’

§ ‘I loved the way you transformed once the mask was in place. It made the story magical.’ Joeann Argue

And finally, the full text of the comment I quoted earlier.

§ ‘The Black Bird is very powerful but his care for Dona Rosita also came through. In fact, so many other aspects of the bird came through to me – its concern for her welfare, and even its pride for the service it gave in keeping her safe and for its cleverness. Very mult-idimensional – such a well-developed character.’

No part of this article can be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the author.

If you wish to contact Rita, email her at

peterboroughstorytellers@cogeco.ca

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AN INVITATION TO TALES AND TIPS READERS

Rita is a storyteller and mask performance artist who highly values the comments and reactions of her audience. As a reader of ‘The Log Of The Black Bird Mask’, she invites your comments about the series. Some possible aspects you may wish to comment upon are:

§ what you learned about mask making and performing in mask
§ insights into the creative process of preparing for a performance
§ your thoughts about the concept of the mask taking on its own personality and character through creation, rehearsal and performance
§ your personal emotional reactions to the eight week process
§ any other aspect of the log story that you would like to tell her about

All of your ideas and comments will help Rita shape her next performance of ‘The Black Bird Who Spoke Three Times’.

If you send us comments on the Black Bird log series, let us know if you would give us permission to publish your comments on our blog in a subsequent article. If you agree to publishing, let us know if we can use your name (first, last or both) or a pseudonym or no name at all.

Send your comments in an email to: peterboroughstorytellers@cogeco.ca

THERE’S A VIDEO OF THE BLACK BIRD PERFORMANCE

A video was made of the performance and a portion of the live audience feedback immediately afterwards. The You Tube video link appears in our blog post of October 16, 2013.

Peterborough Storytellers: Tales and Tips

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

AN AMAZING LIBRARY RESOURCE FOR STORYTELLERS

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

POSTSCRIPT TO THE LOG OF THE BLACK BIRD MASK

Monday, November 25, 2013

'THE LOG OF THE BLACK BIRD MASK' ALL IN ONE PLACE