TELLING STORIES IN MASK, PART 2: THE MASK CHOOSES THE STORY

By Rita Grimaldi

           

Mask making is an art form that flows from my hands. Storytelling flows from my body and my voice. Sometimes I combine these two art forms. When I do tell stories in mask, the mask enables me to enter the story transformed into one of its characters.

         

In 1994, I began telling stories in mask. I decided to make masks for a story - a complex story that required four masks – a bear, a coyote, a woman and a boy. From that time onwards I worked on masks. Some masks I designed for stories but many masks had no story waiting for them to tell. These masks I hung on my studio walls and sometimes I would look at them and think ‘Monkey, what story could you tell?’ or ‘Fierce Rose (a female with jagged cut teeth and a rose petal crown), what is your story?’. No answer would come.

The Duppy Mask

This past October, our storytelling group planned an evening of telling ‘Tales of Terror’. Looking through my repertoire of stories, I came across The Duppy Tale. All of a sudden an image came to me of a mask with a long pointed nose or beak. I went into the studio and looked on the walls. There in the back corner was a blue mask with a long pointed beak. I had never worn this mask, but as I looked at it I knew that it belonged to the story of the duppy bird. In fact, it was the Duppy Bird. So I began to relearn the story in the first person and then began to practice the story in the mask.

The Experience Of Telling In The Duppy Bird Mask

A duppy bird is a ghost bird and the story involves a little boy shooting the king of the duppy birds on Halloween night in the cemetery. The bird makes the boy eat him and then causes the boy to die.

I can hardly explain how telling this story in this mask affected me. I went into a state of altered self. This self was not me. It was the self that belonged to the bird in the story. It took me several days to shed it. I doubt if I will ever tell this story again. Still, I don’t regret the experience and the mask remains on my studio wall.

The Story Of The Curious Girl

In March, our storytelling group was doing a special event for World Storytelling Day. I wanted to do something in mask. Researching for a new story, I found Kay Stone’s story of The Curious Girl. A vague memory came to me of a mask I had never used. Looking, I found that it was not hanging on my studio wall. I began to look through boxes. Finally after searching off and on for two days, I found it buried at the bottom of a box. Yes, seeing it confirmed that it was the Curious Girl and it wanted to tell the story.

The second mask I needed for the story was the mask of the Red Bird. There in the studio hung a red bird that I had made and never used. It was the very bird for the story. To use the two masks to represent the girl and the bird I decided to make a head covering that would act as a consistent visual feature during the girl’s transformation into a bird. I also added layers of feathers and natural objects to the bird. Finally, after learning the story, I rehearsed it in the two masks.

The Red Bird Mask

The Curious Girl Mask

World Storytelling Day - Telling Of The Curious Girl

The morning of the telling I went to my university class. Somewhere during the lecture I realized that something was wrong with how I had planned the performance. The girl mask would tell the beginning and after the witch transforms her into a bird, the bird mask would tell the middle but after the girl transforms back into girl I had planned to tell the story out of mask in the first person as if I was the girl.

But as the morning wore on I became more and more uneasy about telling in the first person out of mask. Finally, at the break between the lecture and the seminar, I discussed what to do with a fellow mature student who had done a lot of drama. She told me to switch into the third person to tell the end and trust your audience to understand the switch. And that is what I did.

Trusting The Masks. Trusting Myself. Trusting the Audience To Understand

From my journal, remembering the telling the next morning:

I am telling The Curious Girl in the young girl mask. The story belongs with her. She reads if off the face. She knows it in my body. One third way through I switch to the bird mask my voice remains the same. Two thirds through I switch out of mask and into the third person, my voice drops lower. I sit to finish – I have been standing for the rest except for the mask change.

Two ladies come up to me after the story in the break. One says with amazement, “The girl mask was smaller than your face and when you put it on you changed into a young girl.” The second one says, “And the bird’s mouth moved while you talked.”

The Curious Girl Is On Video

         

It is two weeks since the performance and my telling of The Curious Girl has now been posted on on-line. Watching the girl and the bird I feel the rightness of the mask story choice. They belong to the story. Watching myself at the end, finishing the story as storyteller and not a story character was right too. It was, after all, the Masks’ story and not mine. But I invite you to look at it yourself and see what you think.

You can find the video of Rita’s The Curious Girl story on the Tales and Tips blog of Peterborough Storytellers.

 www.peterboroughstorytellers.blogspot.com