THE SECOND STORY OF THE BLACK BEAR MASK - PART ONE

By Rita Grimaldi

         

My Black Bear mask knows only one story and it is part of a story at that.

The Bear mask was the third mask worn in the telling of The Navaho Emergence Cycle. The chief’s daughter wears the mask when she transforms herself into a bear. The last time I told this story was sixteen years ago. Since that time, the Black Bear mask has been hanging on my studio wall, always in a prominent place and always looking out at me.

In about a month I will again use the Bear mask to tell the Iroquois story of The Boy Who Lived With Bears.  Yesterday, while practicing the story in the Bear mask, I found that I no longer knew the feeling of the mask. I had a distant memory of using it to tell part of The Navaho Emergence Cycle but that was long ago. Now I no longer feel the power and energy of the mask. And on top of that, the new story feels foreign to the mask. So today, a month before the performance, I decide to seriously begin to belong with who the mask is.

I start this process with a second re-write of The Story of The Boy Who Lived With Bears. In my first writing, I had the Black Bear mask speak the story from the beginning. But yesterday, while rehearsing in mask, this felt wrong. Perhaps it is because the first part of the story has to do with the boy’s life in the human world and the bear has no part in that life. So I decided to rewrite and only have the bear mask tell the part in the new story from the time in the forest when the bear first appears.

I then reworked the costume. I had originally chosen the same blouse that I wore sixteen years ago for the bear in The Navaho Emergence Cycle. I paired the blouse with a black skirt. But this blouse and skirt combination had no power. It was a mismatch to the power of the mask itself. And it was a mismatch to the wild feeling of the bear in the forest environment.

So today I began to try different combinations of clothing. I settled on the linear look of a long slim brown jumper over a pair of brown-cuffed slacks. On top of this, I put a leather vest with long ties. The ties will have some green leaves attached to them. I will wear a green, long-sleeve jersey underneath the jumper. And black socks and shoes under the slacks.

The Black Bear mask’s second story about a boy who lives with bears, requires a new bank of experiences for its telling. They are experiences that place the bear in the wild, natural world of the forest. Even in the story, these kinds of experiences are not coded in human language. The story says that the bear spoke in what sounded like growls. But when the boy listened closely, he could understand what was said. I am working on understand this language of the wild so that I can become the wild bear mother inside the Bear mask.

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Part Two of the Black Bear mask will be posted on Monday, February 10th.

All rights reserved by Rita Grimaldi (2014)

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