THE SECOND STORY OF THE BLACK BEAR MASK - PART THREE

By Rita Grimaldi

The Story of ‘The Boy Who Lived with Bears’ Takes its Final Form

                  The Black Bear mask in the Forest

The Blog writing, the coaching and particularly seeing the forest photos of the masks helped me to internalize the strength of mother bear. As I rehearsed yesterday, her strength poured into me and released out of me as a deep voice and an upright body. But with this strength came a comparison. My out of mask telling of the beginning of the story, the part before mother bear enters, lacked depth and magic. After finishing the rehearsal, I wanted another mask to tell this beginning section of the story.

         

So I went to my studio wall of masks to see which mask might be right for the telling of the beginning. First, I tried the mask of the Chief’s Daughter from The Navaho Emergence Cycle. But she was not right.

Then my eye fell on a mask I had never used. It is a very special mask to me because I first saw it in a dream. It is a Tree Spirit mask. In my dream, it was in a store window. I wanted to have it. Looking through the window, I studied the mask carefully. And when I woke up I made it.

I made the mask in a special way by placing layers of birch bark directly into the mold of my face and then adding rice paper on top of these layers. I have always thought of this mask as a Tree Spirit so using it to tell the beginning of the story is in line with my feeling of the bond between the bear and the forest.

                                        The Tree Spirit mask in the Forest

         

Now I needed to rewrite of the story for a third time. I decided that in the story the Tree Spirit mask would be called The Spirit of the Northern Forest. This would link it to the part of the story that says ‘strange things happened in the forest to the north’. It would also link it more closely to the shamanic traditions of the northern peoples. I then rewrote everything using a lot of my own writing plus parts from three versions of The Boy Who Lived With Bears. My final performance version is a composite story that belonged to the feel of my two masks.

I will be careful to tell the audience how I have rewritten the story and that the story is no longer a true Native American story but is a version of the tale specific to me.

I practiced the new content using both masks. I am very pleased with its depth and beauty. I have formed an alliance with the two masks which will take me, and hopefully the audience, on the journey into the wild nature of my vision of the story.

This story will not be videoed so I hope that many of you will come to see it.

Wednesday, February 19^th at 7pm in the Auditorium of the Peterborough Public Library, Peterborough, Ontario.

Next week, we will post some photos of the performance and a small wrap up of the experience. Thank you for following this journey.

All rights reserved by Rita Grimaldi (2014)

Rita’s email address is peterboroughstorytellers@cogeco.ca